“Well, I snapped her little fingers for puttin’ the paper into the fire, and she cried, and drawed ’em back sudden, and I wuz so afraid she would burn her that I put my hand sudden between her and the fire and jest jammed my hand through the isinglass in the stove and broke it all to smash and she stopped cryin’ and sez, ‘I am glad Gappa broke the issac glass.’”
I laughed a little, a very little, and couldn’t help it. She always will call it “issac glass,” and if I try to make her say micas she will call it “michols,” she is so cunning and cute. He didn’t like my laughin’, I see he didn’t.
Sez he, “I’d laugh if I wuz in your place, sunthin’ ort to be done with her. I couldn’t git her to say she wuz sorry, do the best I could. She will have to be punished.”
“Punished for what?” sez I, as I shook up a piller and put a clean piller bier on it.
“Why, to make her say she is sorry.”
Sez I, as I laid the shams on smooth and pinned ’em up agin the head board, “Mebby she hain’t sorry.”
“Hain’t sorry!” sez he, savage-like, “well, she ort to be, there I ain’t hardly looked at it, and there is lots of news in it I know. As many as seven or eight murders, most probable, and some suicides, and hangin’s and such like, she ort to be sorry, and she has got to say she is.”
“Well,” sez I, a-smoothin’ the things out on the toilet table, “I don’t think she ort to be made to say she is sorry if she hain’t sorry. I believe lots of liars are made in jest that way; probable she told you the truth when she said she wuzn’t sorry, and you want to make her lie,” sez I dryly, “and whip her if she won’t. She see me put a whole paper into the stove this mornin’, and how could she tell the difference between this week’s paper and last? If anybody is to blame we are, we ort to told her to not touch the papers, and we must tell her to not touch the fire. And if I wuz goin’ to punish her for anything it would be for meddlin’ with the stove. I shouldn’t whip her for tellin’ the truth, that wouldn’t be my way.”
“Well, she ort to be punished for sass.”
“I don’t believe she meant it for sass,” sez I, “I wouldn’t interfere if you wuz correctin’ her. But I do not think she meant it for sass.”