“Should you be likely to read any in it to-night?” sez she. I told her I didn’t know as I should. “Wall,” sez she, “if you’ll let me take it, I’ll send it home by to-morrow noon at the outside, and I’ll try not to let you come after it, as you have your other ones.”
“I suppose you can take it,” sez I, in a cold tone; “but I wish you would be careful of it, for I want to get ’em bound.”
She said she would lay it right on to the parlor-table, and, when she read in it, she would hold a paper around it. Sez I: “You needn’t do that,” and I must confess, from that very minute I had my mind. I always mistrust folks that are 2 good; there is a mejum course that I rather see folks pursue. I always love to see folks begin as they can hold out, and folks that are 2 good hardly ever hold out. When I see such folks, I always think of the poor sick woman that lay sufferin’ in total darkness for a week, vainly urgin’ her husband to buy some candles, till finally he went, one night, when she was asleep, and bought 12 candles, and lit ’em all and sot ’em in a row in front of her bed. She, dreamin’ of conflegrations, widly started up to see what was the matter, and sunk back, sayin’ in low and faint axents: “Daddy, when you are good, you are 2 good.”
When Miss Gowdey said she would keep it on the parlor table, I had my doubts, and when she said she would hold a paper round it when she read it, I thought more’n as likely as not the book was lost; but I didn’t say nothin’, I kep’ in, and done up the book and handed it to her. She took a large clean handkercher out of her pocket, and folded it round it and started up to go.
If you will believe it, it run along as much as 2 or 3 weeks and no book sent home; and one night, when Josiah and I was a-settin’ there alone—the children was out to one of the neighbors’—I jest broke out, and sez I:
“It is a shameful piece of business, and I won’t stan’ it.”
“What is the matter?” sez Josiah, layin’ down his new paper.
“Miss Gowdey is the matter! My magazine is the matter,” sez I. “There she has kep’ it ’most 3 weeks, and she knew I hadn’t read a word in it,” sez I. “It is a burnin’ shame.”
“Wal, what made you let it go?” sez he. “Deacon Gowdey is worth 3 times as much as I be. Why don’t they take their own magazines? What made you let ’em have it?”