I gave him his bill, and he started off and I was just a-musin’ over his last words, and thinkin’ dreamily, that Lank’s best way would be to take the key-hole and get a new door made to it, when the hired girl came to the door. I could see, that by livin’ in a house devoted to the aperiences, she, too, had ketched the same look. She had the same sort of thin, hazy look onto her, besides bein’ in poor order as to flesh, real bony and haggard. Her face was done up in an old green baize veil, for the toothache.
I told her who I was and she seemed to be kinder frustrated and said she’d go in and tell the family. Left me right there a-standin’ on my feet; and I, not knowin’ how long she would be gone, thought I would set down, for it always tires me to stand any length of time on my feet.
There was an elegant, imposin’ lookin’ chair set there, by the side of a noble lookin’ table. But to my surprise, and almost mortification, when I went to set down, I set right down through it the first thing. I ketched, almost wildly, at the massive table to try to save myself, and that gave way and split on my hands, as you may say, and fell right over onto me. And then, I see it was made of rough, shackly boards, but upholstered with a gorgeous red and yellow cotton spread, like the chair. They both looked noble.
I gathered myself up and righted up the table as well as I could, murmuring almost mechanically to myself:
“Put not your trust in princes, nor turkey red calico, Josiah Allen’s wife. Set yourself not down upon them blindly, lest you be wearied and faint in your mind and lame in your body.”
I was just a-rehearsin’ this to myself, when the hired girl came back, and says I:
“I am glad you have come, for I don’t know but I should have brought the hull house down in ruins onto me, if you hadn’t come jest as you did.”
And then she up and told me that that chair and table wasn’t made for use, but jest for looks. She said they wanted a table and a reception chair in the hall, and not bein’ able to buy a sound one, they had made ’em out of boards they had by ’em.
“Well,” says I, mildly, “I went right down through the chair, the first thing; it skint me.” I got along through the hall first-rate after this, only I most fell twice. For the floor being carpeted with wall-paper, varnished to be oil cloth aperiently, and the water and snow comin’ in so free at the front door, it had soaked it all up in spots, and bein’ tore up in places, and the varnish makin’ it kinder stiff, it was as bad as a man-trap to ketch folks’ feet in and throw ’em.
Jest before we got to the parlor door, I see that, in the agitation of body and mind I had experienced since I came in, I had dropped one of my cuff buttons, nice, black ones, that I had purchased jest before we started, at an outlay of thirty-seven and a half cents. And the hired girl said she would go back and look for it.