“Wall, I'd like to know,” says he, in an injured tone, “what you calculate to do with me while you are gone?”
“Why,” says I, “I'll have the girl Ury is engaged to, come here and do the chores, and work for herself; they are goin' to be married before long: and I'll give her some rolls, and let her spin some yarn for herself. She'll be glad to come.”
“How long do you s'pose you'll be gone? She hain't no cook. I'd as lives eat rolls, as to eat her fried cakes.”
“Your pardner will fry up 2 pans full before she goes, Josiah; and I don't s'pose I'll be gone over four days.”
“Oh, well! then I guess I can stand it. But you had better make some mince-pies ahead, and other kinds of pies, and some fruit-cake, and cookies, and tarts, and things: it is always best to be on the safe side, in vittles.”
So it wus agreed on,—that I should fill two cubbard shelves full of provisions, to help him endure my absence.
I wus some in hopes that he might give up the idee of bein' United-States senator, and I might have rest from my tower; for I dreaded, oh, how I dreaded, the job! But as day by day passed, he grew more and more rampant with the idee. He talked about it all the time daytimes; and in the night I could hear him murmur to himself,—
“Hon. Josiah Allen!”
And once I see it in his account-book, “Old Peedick debtor to two sap-buckets to Hon. Josiah Allen.”
And he talked sights, and sights, about what he wus goin' to do when he got to Washington, D.C.—what great things he wus goin' to do. And I would get wore out, and say to him,—