Sez the President, “I would be glad to do Serepta’s errents, I think she is justified in askin’ for her rights, and to have the Ring destroyed, but I am not the one to do them.”
Sez I, “Who is the man or men?”
He looked all round the room and up and down as if in hopes he could see someone layin’ round on the floor, or danglin’ from the ceilin’, that would take the responsibility offen him, and in the very nick of time the door opened after a quick rap, and the President jumped up with a relieved look on his linement, and sez:
“Here is the very man to do the errents.” And he hastened to introduce me to the Senator who entered. And then he bid me a hasty adoo, but cordial and polite, and withdrew himself.
V.
“HE WUZ DRETFUL POLITE”
I felt glad to have this Senator do Serepta’s errents, but I didn’t like his looks. My land! talk about Serepta Pester bein’ disagreeable, he wuz as disagreeable as she any day. He wuz kinder tall and looked out of his eyes and wore a vest. He wuz some bald-headed, and wore a large smile all the while, it looked like a boughten one that didn’t fit him, but I won’t say it wuz. I presoom he’ll be known by this description. But his baldness didn’t look to me like Josiah Allen’s baldness, and he didn’t have the noble linement of the President, no indeed. He wuz dretful polite, good land! politeness is no name for it, but I don’t like to see anybody too good. He drawed a chair up for me and himself and asked me:
If he should have the inexpressible honor and delightful joy of aiding me in any way, if so to command him to do it or words to that effect. I can’t put down his second-hand smiles and genteel looks and don’t want to if I could.
But tacklin’ hard jobs as I always tackle ’em, I sot down calm in front of him with my umbrell on my lap and told him all of Serepta’s errents, and how I had brought ’em from Jonesville on my tower. I told over all her sufferin’s and wrongs from the Rings and from not havin’ her rights, and all her sister’s Azuba Clapsaddle’s, and her Aunt Cassandra Keeler’s, and Hulda and Drusilly’s and Abagail Flanderses injustices and sufferin’s. I did her errents as honorable as I’d love to have one done for me, I told him all the petickulars, and as I finished I said firmly:
“Now can you do Serepta Pesterses errents and will you?”
He leaned forward with that disagreeable boughten smile of hisen and took up one corner of my mantilly, it wuz cut tab fashion, and he took up the tab and said in a low insinuatin’ voice, lookin’ clost at the edge of the tab: