“Wall,” says Josiah, cheerfully, “I knew it wuzn’t long, anyway!”
I glanced my gray eye down my letter, and says I, in agitated tones:
“She that was Alzina Ann Allen is comin’ here a-visitin’. She wrote me three weeks ahead, so’s to have me prepared. And here she is liable to come in on us any minute, now, and ketch us all unprepared,” says I. “I wouldn’t have had it happen for a ten-cent bill, to had one of the relations, on your side, come and ketch me in such a condition. Then the curtains are all down in the spare room. I washed ’em yesterday, and they hain’t ironed. And the carpet in the settin’-room up to mend; and not a mite of fruit cake in the house, and she a-comin’ here to-day. I am mortified ’most to death, Josiah Allen. And if you’d give me that letter, I should have hired help, and got everything done. I should think your conscience would smart like a burn, if you have got a conscience, Josiah Allen.”
“Wall, less have a little sunthin’ to eat, Samantha, and I’ll help ’round.”
“Help! What’ll you do, Josiah Allen?”
“Oh! I’ll do the barn chores, and help all I can. I guess you’d better cook a little of that canned sammon, I got to Janesville.”
Says I, coldly, “I believe, Josiah Allen, if you wus on your way to the gallus, you make ’em stop and get vittles for you, meat vittels, if you could.”
I didn’t say nothin’ more, for, as the greatest poets has sung, “the least said, the soonest mended.” But I ’rose, and with outward calmness, put on the tea kettle and potatoes, and opened the can of salmon, and jist as I put that over the stove, with some sweet cream and butter, if you’ll believe it, that very minute, she that was Alzina Ann Allen drove right up to the door, and come in.
You could have knocked me down with a hen’s feather (as it were) my feelin’s wus such; but I concealed ’em as well as I could, and advanced to the door, and says I:
“How do you do, Miss Richerson?”—she is married to Jenothen Richerson, old Daniel Richerson’s oldest boy.