“Oh, Floyd, you are joking; you oughtn’t to serve me so. An’t you joking, bud?” asked Polly, with a look that seemed to beg he would say yes.
“It’s true as preaching,” he replied, “the cake’s all dough!”
Polly whispered something to her mother, who threw up her hands, and exclaimed, “Oh, my!” and then whispered the secret to some other lady, and away it went. Such whispering and throwing up of hands and eyes, is rarely seen at a quaker meeting. Consternation was in every face. Poor Polly was a very personification of “patience on a monument, smiling green and yellow melancholy.”
The captain, discovering that something was the matter, drove off the dogs, and inquired what had happened to cause such confusion. “What the devil’s the matter now?” he said. “You all look as down in the mouth as we did on the Santaffee (St. Fe), when the quartermaster said the provisions had all give out. What’s the matter—won’t somebody tell me? Old ’oman, has the dogs got into the kitchen and eat up all the supper, or what else has come to pass? out with it!”
“Ah, old man, bad news!” said the wife with a sigh.
“Well, what is it? you are all getting as bad as Floyd, terryfying a fellow to death.”
“Parson Gympsey was digging a new horse trough and cut his leg to the bone with the foot-adze, and can’t come—Oh, dear!”
“I wish he had taken a fancy to ’a done it a week ago, so we mout ’a got another parson, or, as long as no other time would suit but to-day, I wish he had cut his derned eternal head off!”
“Oh, my! husband,” exclaimed Mrs. Peablossom. Bushy Creek Ned, standing in the piazza with his fiddle, struck up the old tune of
“We’ll dance all night, ’till broad daylight,