The next day, after I done up my mornin’s work, I went down to Deacon Gowdey’s; I wanted to know about my magazine. There wasn’t anybody in the settin’-room, when I went in, but Johnny; he was settin’ on the floor, playin’ with some pictures.
Sez I: “Where is your ma, Johnny?”
Sez he: “She’s in the kitchen, huskin’ some beans fer dinner; but see what I’ve got, Aunt Allen,” and he come up in front of me, with the picture of a woman cut out of a book. As he come up close to me, and held it up in front of me by the head, I knew it in a minute; it come out of my magazine—it was the very handsomest figger in the fashion plate. For a minute, I was speechless; but these thoughts raged tumultuously through my brain: “If the child is father to the man, as I heard Thomas Jefferson readin’ about, here is a parent that I would like to have the care of fer a short time.” At this crisis in my thoughts, he spoke up agin:
“I am goin’ to cut her petticoats down into pantaloons, and paint some whiskers on her face and make a pirate of her.”
Then the feelin’s I had long curbed broke forth, and I said to him in awful tones: “You will be a pirate yourself, young man, if you keep on—a bloody pirate on the high seas,” sez I. “What do you mean by tearin’ folks’es books to pieces in this way?”
Just at this minute, Miss Gowdey came in, and heerd my last words. She jest said: “How d’ye do?” to me, and then she went at Johnny:
“You awful child, you! How dare you touch that book? How dare you unlock the parlor-door, and climb up on the best table, and take the clean paper off of it, or handle it? How dare you, John Wesley?”
“You give it to me yourself, ma; you know you did, last night, when the minister was here. You said, if I wouldn’t tease fer any more honey, you’d lem’me take it. And can’t I have some honey now? Say, ma, can’t you gim’me some?”
“I’ll give you honey that you won’t like,” sez she: “takin’ the advantage of your ma, and tearin’ folks’es books to pieces in this way—books that you know your ma is so careful of.” And she took him by the collar of his little gray roundabout, and led him into the kitchen, and, by the screamin’ that I heerd from there shortly, I thought he didn’t like his honey. She come back into the room in a few minutes and sez she; “I am so mortified, I don’t know what to do; I never did see such a child. He see me settin’ down shellin’ beans, and he took the advantage of me and got the book. That’s jest the way with him: if I don’t keep my eyes on him every minute, he’ll get the advantage of me. I am mortified ’most to death,” sez she, gatherin’ up the pieces and puttin’ ’em into the book. As she handed it to me, the leaves kinder fell apart, and I see, on one of the patterns, a grease-spot as big as one of my hands. She see it and broke out ag’n: “I declare, I am so mortified; I was goin’ to take that all out with some powder I have got. My Sophrenie wanted to take a pattern off, the night before she went away, and she hadn’t any thin paper, and so she greased a piece of writin’-paper and laid on to it and took it off. But I was going to take it all out, every speck of it. I will give you some of the powder to take home with you.”
“I don’t care about any powder,” sez I, calmly; and I jest held on to my tongue with all the strength I had; and, with that, I up and started home’ards.