And says four of ’em, speakin’ up, tenderly, bendin’ their eight eyes, beseechingly, upon my specks, “You will stay a week with us, won’t you?”
“One week!” says the little fine voice. “That hain’t nothin’; you must stay a month.”
“We won’t let you off a day sooner,” says six warm voices, awful warm.
“Sthay all thummer, do,” says the lispin’ voice.
“Yes, do!” says the hull eight.
And then Delila Ann throwed both her arms round my neck; and says she, “Oh, if you could only stay with us always, how happy, happy, we should be.”
And then she laid her head right down on my shoulder, and began to sob, and weep, and cry. I was a’most sickened to the death by their behavior and actin’, but the voice of sorrow always appeals to my heart. And I see in half a minute what the matter was—Lank had gin out, had killed himself a-workin’. And though I knew she was jest as much to blame as if she was made of arsenic, and Lank had swallowed her, still, pity and sympathy makes the handsomest, shinyest kind of varnish to cover up folks’ faults with, and Delila Ann shone with it from head to foot, as she lay there on my neck, wettin’ my best collar with her tears, and almost tearin’ the lace offen it with her deep windy sithes. I pitied Delila Ann from pretty near the bottom of my heart. I forgot, for the time bein’, her actin’ and behavin’. I felt bad, and says I:
“Then he is gone, Delila Ann, I feel to sympathize with you, though I never seen him. I am sorry for you as I can be sorry.”
“Yes!” says she, pretty near choked up with emotion; “He is gone; we have lost him. You don’t know how we loved him. It seems as if our hearts will break.”