And he did not stop asking questions after this sort, till all the particulars of the Beedle family were published and proclaimed in Mrs. Jones’s last screech. He then sunk back into his doze again.
The dog stretched himself before one andiron, the cat squat down before the other. Silence came on by degrees, like a calm snow-storm, till nothing was heard but a cricket under the hearth, keeping time with a sappy, yellow-birch forestick. Sally sat up, prim as if she were pinned to the chair-back, her hands crossed genteely upon her lap, and her eyes looking straight into the fire. Mammy Jones tried to straighten herself too, and laid her hands across in her lap. But they would not lay still. It was full twenty-four hours since they had done any work, and they were out of all patience with keeping Sunday. Do what she would to keep them quiet they would bounce up now and then, and go through the motions, in spite of the Fourth Commandment.
For my part, I sat looking very much like a fool. The more I tried to say something, the more my tongue stuck fast. I put my right leg over the left, and said, “Hem!” Then I changed, and put the left over the right. It was no use, the silence kept coming on thicker and thicker. The drops of sweat began to crawl all over me. I got my eye upon my hat, hanging on a peg, on the road to the door, and then I eyed the door. At this moment, the old Captain all at once sung out:
“Johnny Beedle!”
It sounded like a clap of thunder, and I started right up an eend.
“Johnny Beedle, you’ll never handle sich a drumstick as your father did, if you live to the age of Methuseler. He would toss up his drumstick, and while it was whirlin’ in the air, take off a gill er rum, and then ketch it as it come down, without losin’ a stroke in the tune. What d’ye think of that, ha? But scull your chair round close alongside er me, so you can hear. Now, what have you come arter?”
“I arter? Oh, jist takin’ a walk. Pleasant walkin’, I guess. I mean, jest to see how ye all do.”
“Ho, that’s another lie! You’ve come a courtin’, Johnny Beedle; you’re a’ter our Sal. Say, now, d’ye want to marry, or only to court?”
This is what I call a choker. Poor Sally made but one jump, and landed in the middle of the kitchen; and then she skulked in the dark corner, till the old man, after laughing himself into a whooping-cough, was put to bed.
Then came apples and cider, and the ice being broke, plenty chat with Mammy Jones about the minister and the “sarmon.” I agreed with her to a nicety upon all the points of doctrine, but I had forgot the text and all the heads of the discourse, but six. Then she teazed and tormented me to tell who I accounted the best singer in the gallery, that day. But, mum! there was no getting that out of me.