And havin’ had Philury to do the heaviest of the work, I didn’t feel so very beat out, and I changed my dress and sot quiet and peaceful and very calm in my frame a waitin’ for my companion, while the grateful odor of broiled chicken, and cream biscuit, and the rich coffee riz up and permeated the room.
Josiah duz love a cup of hot, fragrant coffee with cream into it when he has been to work in the cold all day. And it wuz quite cold for the time of year.
Wall, I had put on a good new gingham dress and a white apron, and I had a lace ruffle round my neck; and though I hain’t vain, nor never wuz called so, only by the envious, still I knew I looked well.
And I could read this truth in my companion’s eyes as he come home cold and cross and hungry—come into that warm, pleasant room and into the presence of his devoted pardner.
At once and imegiatly his cares, his crossness, and his troubled mean dropped from him like a garment he wuz tired of, and he felt well.
And his appetite was good—excellent.
And it wuzn’t till after the dishes wuz all washed up, and we wuz a settin’ on each side of the stand, which had a bright cloth and a clean lamp on it, I with my knittin’ work and he with his World, that he resoomed and took up the conversation about Cousin John Richard’s beliefs.
And I see, jest what I had seen, that as well as he liked John Richard, that worthy creeter had not convinced him; and he even felt inclined, now the magnetism of his presence wuz withdrawn, to pow at his earnest beliefs and sentiments.
I waved off Josiah’s talk; I tried to evade his eloquence (or what he called eloquence). For somehow John Richard’s talk had made more impression onto me than it had onto Josiah, and I could not bear to hear the cherished beliefs of that good man set all to naut.
So I tried to turn off Josiah’s attention by allusions to the tariff, the calves, the national debt, to Ury’s new suit of clothes, to the washboard, to Tirzah Ann’s married life, and to the excellencies and beauties of our two little granddaughters Babe and Snow—Tirzah Ann’s and Thomas Jefferson’s little girls.