And so it didn’t surprise me when she asked me if I would lobby a little for her in Washington. I spozed it wuz some new kind of tattin’ or fancy work. I told her I shouldn’t have much time but would try to git her some if I could.
And she said she wanted me to lobby myself. And then I thought mebby it wuz a new kind of dance and told her, “I wuz too old to lobby, I hadn’t lobbied a step since I wuz married.”
And then she explained she wanted me to canvas some of the Senators.
And I hung back and asked her in a cautious tone, “How many she wanted canvassed, and how much canvas it would take?”
I had a good many things to buy for my tower, and though I wanted to obleege Serepta, I didn’t feel like runnin’ into any great expense for canvas.
And then she broke off from that subject, and said she wanted her rights and wanted the Whiskey Ring broke up.
And she talked a sight about her children, and how bad she felt to be parted from ’em, and how she used to worship her husband and how her hull life wuz ruined and the Whiskey Ring had done it, that and wimmen’s helpless condition under the law and she cried and wep’ and I did. And right while I wuz cryin’ onto that gingham apron, she made me promise to carry them two errents of hern to the President and git ’em done for her if I possibly could.
She wanted the Whiskey Ring destroyed and her rights, and she wanted ’em both inside of two weeks.
I told her I didn’t believe she could git ’em done inside that length of time, but I would tell the President about it, and I thought more’n likely as not he would want to do right by her. “And,” sez I, “if he sets out to, he can haul them babies of yourn out of that Ring pretty sudden.”
And then to git her mind offen her sufferin’s, I asked how her sister Azuba wuz gittin’ along? I hadn’t heard from her for years. She married Phileman Clapsaddle, and Serepty spoke out as bitter as a bitter walnut, and sez she: