Well, a few days after this Josiah told me he had seen Mrs. Greene Smythe to Thomas Jefferson’s office, and she wanted to see me on a little bizness, and wanted me to come in when I wuz up that way, as she understood I wuz quite often, she wanted to consult me about a Charity Bazar. Well, the word charity is always a-takin’ one with me, for in that incomparable chapter I love so well it describes all the graces at full length, and then sez, “The greatest of these is Charity.”
CHAPTER XIII.
It wuzn’t long after this that Josiah had to go over to South Scriba to sell some spruce lumber, he wanted to dicker for some salted white fish, they ketch sights of white fish to the lake, and by goin’ a little round we could go right by the summer hotel where Miss Greene Smythe wuz stayin’. The hotel wuz a big buildin’ standin’ in large, beautiful grounds; it wuz the biggest hotel in the place, and she had the hull floor of one wing, lived there jest as independent as you please with her own servants, and her daughter, Medora, and the young twins, Algernon and Angenora.
Josiah left me there, and, as I wuz waitin’ to be showed up to her room, I hearn the twins fightin’ fiercely at the head of the stairs and kickin’ each other and swearin’ like two young pirates at the top of their voices, and while I wuz lookin’ on in astonishment a girl come runnin’ downstairs and yanked ’em back, one in each hand, and swore at ’em, for I hearn her with my own ears, and scolded ’em like a termagant. I spoze it wuz their French nurse, for her swearin’ had a kinder queer axent. Well, I sot there quite a spell while the man went to see whether Miss Greene Smythe wuz to home; he wuz gone a awful while.
And while I sot there a good lookin’ woman, with a rather sharp chin and nose, come along, and sot down in a chair near me, she come in jest as the girl dragged ’em off, quarrelin’ and usin’ words I wouldn’t speak for a dollar bill. And this woman went on and told me things I hated to hear—I didn’t ask her, she told of her own accord.
Sez she, “Miss Greene Smythe makes a great show, and don’t want to even speak to folks full as good as she is.” And here she tosted her head quite a good deal. “But if she would spend some of the time on her children she spends on fashion and them everlastin’ young men danglin’ round her, she would be less apt to have a gallows rared up in her family.” She said she didn’t believe there ever wuz such a actin’ child in the hull world as Algernon. Angenora, she said, wuz better dispositioned to start with, but wuz bein’ spilte by Algernon’s plaguin’ her so. She had got so she would swear and kick almost as loud and hard as he would while he wuz fightin’ her.
“Well,” sez I, “they’re little things, they don’t know any better.”
“I know it,” sez she, “their nurses are ugly dispositioned, both on ’em, and they’re jest as mean as they can be to the children, though they keep ’em clean enough. But,” she said they wuz ignorant as might be expected, and used so many slang words and low phrases the children had ketched their language and oaths, so their talk wuz more like a pirate’s children or a buckaneer’s than the children of Christian parents. “And fight!” sez she, she didn’t believe there wuz a bigger fighter on earth than Algernon for his age. And lie! why, Algernon’s nurse, she said, wuz such a liar that she fairly seemed to prespire untruth through her pores, and them children wuz with her all the time and breathed her atmosphere, drinkin’ it down with their milk (they wuz both brung up on a bottle, Miss Greene Smythe thinkin’ it more genteel). And Algernon would lie now in such a picturesque, dashin’ way as to fairly stunt anybody to hear it.