“And if you are through with your breakfast,” says his father, “you had better go and give the cows something to eat.”
“Can’t they come here, father?” says he, leanin’ kinder lazy over the table.
Says I, “That is pretty talk to your father, Thomas J. How do you suppose your days will be long in the land if you don’t honor your father and mother?”
“I do honor you, mother. I never see such long, wet, tedious days as they have been ever sence I have been home from school, and I lay it to honorin’ you and father so.”
Says I, “I won’t hear another light word this mornin’, Thomas Jefferson—not one.” He read earnestness in my tone; and he rose with alackrity and went to the barn, and his farther soon drew on his boots and followed him, and with a pensive brow I turned out my dish water. I hadn’t got my dishes more than half done, when, with no warnin’ of no kind, the door burst open, and in tottered Deacon Slimpsey, pale as a piece of white cotton shirt. I wildly wrung out my dish-cloth, and offered him a chair, sayin’, in a agitated tone, “What is the matter, Deacon Slimpsey?”
“Am I pursued?” says he, in a voice of low frenzy, as he sank into a wooden-bottomed chair. I cast one or two eagle glances out of the window, both ways, and replied in a voice of choked-down emotion:
“There haint nobody in sight. Has your life been attacked by burglers and incendiarys? Speak, Deacon Slimpsey, speak!”
He struggled nobly for calmness, but in vain. And then he put his hand wildly to his brow and murmured, in low and hollow accents:
“Betsey Bobbet!”