“Who’ll wait on them?” says I.
“Get a girl, get two girls,” says Josiah. Says he: “Think of sixteen dollars a week. You can keep a variety of hired girls, you kin, on that. Besides the pure happiness we are going to enjoy with ’em, we can have everything we want. Thank fortune, Samantha, we have now got a competency.”
“Wal,” says I, in the same coolish tones, or pretty nigh the same, “time will tell.”
Wal, they came on a Friday mornin’, on the five o’clock train. Josiah had to meet ’em to the depot, and he felt so afraid that he should miss ’em, and somebody else would undermind him, and get ’em as boarders, that he wus up about three o’clock; and went out and milked by candlelight, so’s to be sure to be there in season.
And I had to get up, and cook his breakfast, before daylight; feelin’ like a fool, too, for he had kept me awake all night, a-most, a-walkin’ ’round the house, a-lookin’ at the clock, to see what time it wus; and, if he said to me once, he said thirty times durin’ the night:
“It would be jest my luck to have somebody get in ahead of me to the cars, and undermind me at the last minute, and get ’em away from us.”
Says I, in a dry tone (not as dry as I had used sometimes, but dryish):
“I guess there won’t be no danger, Josiah.”
Wal, at about a-quarter to seven he driv’ up with ’em; a tall, waspish-lookin’ woman, and four children; the man they said wouldn’t be there till Saturday night. I thought the woman had a singular look to her: I thought so when I first sot my eyes on her. And the oldest boy, about thirteen years old, he looked awful curious. I thought, to myself, as they walked up to the house, side by side, that I never, in all my hull life, seed a waspisher and more spindliner-lookin’ woman and a curiouser, stranger-lookin’ boy. The three children that come along behind ’em, seemed to be pretty much of a size, and looked healthy, and full of witchcraft, as we found afterward, they indeed was.
Wal, I had a hard tussle of it, through the day, to cook and do for ’em. Their appetites wus tremendous, ’specially the woman and oldest boy. They wuzn’t healthy appetites, I could see that in a minute. Their eyes would look holler and hungry, and they would look voraciously at the empty, deep dishes, and tureens, after they had eat them all empty—eat enough for four men.