He smiled real agreable, and said, “when he visited Jonesville, he wouldn't fail to take tea with me.”
Says I, “So do; and, if you get lost, you jest enquire at the Corners of old Grout Nickleson, and he will set you right.”
He smiled agin, and said “he wouldn't fail to enquire if he got lost.”
And then I shook hands with him, thinkin' it would be expected of me (his hands are white, and not much bigger than Tirzah Ann's). And then I removed the boy by voyalence, for he was a askin' questions agin, faster than ever; and he poured out over his shoulder a partin' dribble of questions, that lasted till we got outside. And then he tackled me, and he asked me somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1,000 questions on the way back to Miss Smiths'es.
He begun agin on George Washington jest as quick as he ketched sight of his monument agin.
“If George Washington is up on the top of that monument for tellin' the truth, why didn't all the big men try to tell the truth so's to be stood up on pillows outdoors, and not be a layin' down in the grass? And did the little hatchet help him do right? If it did, why didn't all the big men wear them in their belts to do right with, and tell the truth with? And say”—
Oh, dear me suz! He asked me over 40 questions to a lamp-post, for I counted 'em; and there wuz 18 posts.
Good land! I'd ruther wash than try to answer him; but he looked so sweet and good-natured and confidin', his eyes danced so, and he was so awful pretty, that I felt in the midst of my deep fag, that I could kiss him right there in the street if it wuzn't for the looks of it: he is a beautiful child, and very deep.