He was fixin’ on a paper collar, to the lookin’-glass, and he says, in a kind of cherk, genteel way, and with a polite tone.
“I s’pose I shall go to the weddin’.”
You might jist as well exhort the winds to stop blowin’ when it is out on a regular spree, as to stop him when he gets to behavin’. But I guess he got the worst of it in this affair. I guess his aunt Doodle skeert him, she took on so, when he segested the idea of her marryin’ to another man.
She bust right out a cryin’, took her handkerchief out, and rubbed both her eyes with both hands, her elbows standin’ out most straight. She took on awful.
“Oh, Doodle! Doodle!” says she. “What if you had lived to hear your relict laughed at about marryin’ to another man. Oh! what agony it would have brought to your dear linements. Oh! I can’t bear it, I can’t. Oh! when I think of that dear man, how he worshipped the ground I walked on, and the neighbors said he did, they said he thought more of the ground, than he did of me; but he didn’t, he worshipped us both; and what his feelings be, if he had lived, to hear his widder laughed at about another man?”
She sobbed like an infant babe, and I came to the buttery door, I was a makin’ some cherry pies and fruit-cake, and I came to the door, with my nutmeg-grater in my hand, and winked at Thomas, not to say another word to hurt her feelin’s. I winked twice or three times at him, real, severe winks. And he took up one of his law books, and went to readin’, and I went back to my cake. But I kep’ one eye out at her, not knowin’ what trouble of mind might lead her into. She kep’ her handkerchief over her eyes and groaned badly for nearly nine minutes, I should judge. And then she spoke out from under it:
“Do you call Solomon Cypher good lookin’, Tommy?”
“Oh! from fair to middlin’,” says Thomas J.
And then she bust out again. “Oh! when I think what a linement Mr. Doodle had on him, how can I think of any other man? I can’t! I can’t!”