“‘Well,’ said she, ‘you are the most difficult man to understand I ever see—there is no telling whether you are in fun or in earnest. But as I was a saying, there was some such talk afore General Smith went to Texas; but that story was raised by the Pawtaxet College folks, to injure this institution. They did all they could to tear my reputation to chitlins. Me engaged, I should like to see the man that—’
“‘Well, you seemed plaguey scared at one just now,’ sais I. ‘I am sure it was a strange way to show you would like to see a man.’
“‘I didn’t say that,’ she replied, ‘but you take one up so quick.’
“‘It’s a way I have,’ said I, ‘and always had, since you and I was to singing-school together, and larnt sharps, flats, and naturals. It was a crotchet of mine,’ and I just whipped my arm round her waist, took her up and kissed her afore she knowed where she was. Oh Lordy! Out came her comb, and down fell her hair to her waist, like a mill-dam broke loose; and two false curls and a braid fell on the floor, and her frill took to dancin’ round, and got wrong side afore, and one of her shoes slipt off, and she really looked as if she had been in an indgian-scrimmage and was ready for scalpin’.
“‘Then you ain’t engaged, Liddy,’ sais I; ‘how glad I am to hear that, it makes my heart jump, and cherries is ripe now, and I will help you up into the tree, as I used to did when you and I was boy and gall together. It does seem so nateral, Liddy, to have a game of romps with you again; it makes me feel as young as a two-year-old. How beautiful you do look, too! My, what a pity you is shut up here, with these young galls all day, talking by the yard about the corrallas, calyxes, and staminas of flowers, while you
“‘Are doom’d to blush unseen,
And waste your sweetness on the desert air.’
“‘Oh,’ said she, ‘Sam, I must cut and run, and ‘blush unseen,’ that’s a fact, or I’m ruinated,’ and she up curls, comb, braid, and shoe, and off like a shot into a bed-room that adjoined the parlour, and bolted the door, and double-locked it, as if she was afraid an attachment was to be levied on her and her chattels, by the sheriff, and I was a bum-bailiff.
“Thinks I, old gall, I’ll pay you off for treating me the way you did just now, as sure as the world. ‘May I ask, Mr Slick, what is the object of this visit?’ A pretty way to receive a cousin that you haven’t seen so long, ain’t it? and though I say it that shouldn’t say it, that cousin, too, Sam Slick, the attaché to our embassy to the Court of Victoria, Buckingham Palace. You couldn’t a treated me wuss if I had been one of the liveried, powdered, bedizened, be-bloated footmen from ‘t’other big house there of Aunt Harriette’s.’ I’ll make you come down from your stilts, and walk naterel, I know, see if I don’t.
“Presently she returned, all set to rights, and a little righter, too, for she had put a touch of rouge on to make the blush stick better, and her hair was slicked up snugger than before, and looked as if it had growed like anything. She had also slipped a handsome habit-shirt on, and she looked, take her altogether, as if, though she warn’t engaged, she ought to have been afore the last five hot summers came, and the general thaw had commenced in the spring, and she had got thin, and out of condition. She put her hand on her heart, and said, ‘I am so skared, Sam, I feel all over of a twitteration. The way you act is horrid.’
“‘So do I,’ sais I, ‘Liddy, it’s so long since you and I used to—’