I smiled and sithed simultaneous, as it were, and dropped down the creek.
Then with a calm tone, but a beatin' heart, I took up the Plan, and presented it to him. I wanted to find out the heights and depths of that Plan before I said a word about my own adventures at Washington, D.C. Oh, how that plan had worried me! But the minute I mentioned it, Josiah looked as if he would sink. And at first he tried to move off the subject, but I wouldn't let him. I held him up firm to that plan, and, to use a poetical image, I hitched him there.
Says I, “You know what you told me, Josiah,—you said that plan would make you beloved and revered.”
He groaned.
Says I, “You know you said it would make you a lion, and me a lioness: do you remember, Josiah Allen?”
He groaned awful.
Says I firmly, “It didn't make you a lion, did it?”
He didn't speak, only sithed. But says I firmly, for I wus bound to come to the truth of it,—
“Are you a lion?”
“No,” say she, “I hain't.”