But I sez, “I guess I’ll call it Sham Peter, for that is nigh enough to distinguish it from other Peter’s and other shams, and that is the main thing.”
She acted as if she didn’t like it, and answered my questions kinder short and uppish. I never took to her, for I had hearn all these things I have sot down about her babies and husbands and danglers and everything, and I spozed like as not I should have to give her a piece of my mind before she left; I spozed that I might have to onbeknown to me.
Well, Maggie excused herself from goin’ on account of little Snow, she said she didn’t go out much to evening parties for they took her strength so, and she felt that she needed all her strength to take care of her baby. “Take care of your baby!” Miss Green Smythe fairly screamed out the words, she wuz that horrow struck. “You take care of your baby? Why, my dear Mrs. Allen, I could not have understood you aright, you take care of your baby yourself!”
“Yes,” sez Maggie quietly, “I take most of the care of my child myself, and I intend to do so.”
Miss Green Smythe held up both of her hands in horrow and leaned back in her chair, “Well, that is something I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t heard it myself, that you are goin’ to take care of your own child,” and the idee seemed to upset her so that she hurried off earlier, I believe, than she would otherwise. But before she went she did git me to promise to attend a reception she wuz goin’ to give before long; Maggie said she believed it would do me good to git out and have a little change.
CHAPTER III
If there ever wuz a girl in the world that I loved, no kin to me, it wuz Marion Martin. She lived nigh enough so I knew her hull history from A to Z, specially Z. It wuzn’t the beauty of her face nor her sweet disposition, though they wuz attractive, but it wuz her real self, the beauty and patience and duty of her hull life that made up her charm to me.