I see at this Jack’s little face grew overcast with a couple of shadders. One wuz cast from the martyr’s cloudy brow, no doubt the thought of killin’ his Ma wuz more or less painful to him, and the other and deeper shadder wuz that he couldn’t run round free as the young colts that wuz prancin’ about the medder by the side of the house. His poor little legs wuz jest achin’ to jump and bound and curvit round, and there they wuz doomed to imprisonment in a braided fortress. Oh, my! I wuz sorry for Jack, sorry as I could be. Well, Tamer and I sot there and had quite an agreeable visit, Tamer has her properties, though she is sot and overbearin’, I mean when she is herself, more’n half the time I do believe she imagines herself a Female Amazonian or a African Princess or sunthin’.
We talked about the different relations on both sides, and quite a good deal about my grandchildren; she talked middlin’ agreeable, but what I can’t understand in her is her total lack of good judgment. Why, she said that there had been other little girls that looked jest as well as Tirzah Ann’s youngest, little Anna Thyrza, and she said she didn’t like the name, and if Tirzah had called her after herself she ort to called her Tirzah Ann. Sez I, “We call her Delight, she don’t hardly know she has got any other name, and,” sez I, “our daughter can’t bear the name of Tirzah Ann, she thinks it is so old fashioned and humbly, and so I don’t know that she is so much to blame for naming her in this roundabout way after herself. Whitfield would have the baby named after her Ma,” sez I.
Sez Tamer, “I shall always call the child Tirzah.” And agin I told her this it wuzn’t the child’s name, and agin Tamer sez firmly, “Tirzah is a good name, and I shall call her Tirzah.” And so she did call her through the hull of our conversation in spite of all my explanations.
Well, bein’ a visitor, I thought I wouldn’t contend with her, but I wuz some mad on the inside about it. But jest while we wuz talkin’ Tamer looked out towards the road and said, “If there don’t come Aunt Nabby Barnes! oh, dear me! the sight of her fairly makes me sick, and she will stay all day most likely. Well, we have got to make the best of it, I spoze, she has got lots of money and no heirs, and she thinks a good deal of Jack. Now, Jack,” sez she, to the little boy who wuz lookin’ on with open eyes and ears, “you must be good to her and pay attention to her all day.” And then agin she resoomed her complaints. “Why couldn’t she have stayed away to-day and let us alone? I hope she won’t stay long.” By that time Aunt Nabby had knocked at the door, and Tamer met her with enthosiasm and several kisses, and sez:
“Oh, my dear Aunt Nabby! how glad we all are to see you! Why haven’t you been here before? It seems an age since we have seen you; you have come now to stay a good, long while with us, haven’t you? Jack come right here and kiss dear Aunt Nabby.”
“I won’t,” sez Jack. “I don’t want her here.”
“Do you come this minute, Jack, and kiss dear Aunt Nabby. Jack talks about you so much, Aunt Nabby; he thinks everything of you.”
“I don’t,” sez Jack; “I don’t think anything of her at all.”
“Jack, do you come here this minute and kiss Aunt Nabby, or I will punish you severely.”