“I don't know about it,” says he, sort o' musin'ly. “I am gettin' pretty old to begin it, but I don't know but I might get to be a doctor now.”
Says he, brightenin' up, “It can't take much study to deal out a dose of salts now and then, or count anybody's pult.”
But says I firmly, “Give up that idee at once, Josiah Allen. I have come out alive, out of all your other plans and progects, and I hain't a goin' to be killed now at my age, by you as a doctor.”
My tone wus so powerful, and even skairful, that he gin up the idee, and wound up the clock, and went to bed.
CHAPTER VI.
Cicely wus some better the next day. And two days before we sot sail for Washington, Philury Mesick, the girl Ury was payin' attention to, and who was goin' to keep my house durin' my absence on my tower, come with a small, a very small trunk, ornimented with brass nails.
Poor little thing! I wus always sorry for her, she is so little, and so freckled, and so awful willin' to do jest as anybody wants her to. She is a girl that Miss Solomon Gowdey kinder took. And I think, if there is any condition that is hard, it is to be “kinder took.” Why, if I was took at all, I should want to be “took.”
But Miss Gowdey took Philury jest enough not to pay her any regular wages, and didn't take her enough so Philury could collect any pay from her when she left. She left, because there wus a hardness between 'em, on account of a grindstun. Philury said Miss Gowdey's little boy broke the grindstun, and the boy laid it to Philury. Anyway, the grindstun wus broke, and it made a hardness. And when Philury left Miss Gowdey's, all her worldly wealth wuz held in that poor, pitiful lookin' trunk. Why, the trunk looked like Philury, and Philury looked like the trunk. It looked small, and meek, and well disposed; and the brass nails looked some like frecks, only larger.