She didn’t say much, but was in a mighty good humor and laughed a heap. I told her, I never seed sich a change in anybody. Nor I never did. Why she didn’t look like the same gal—good gracious! she looked so nice and trim, with her hair all komed down long side of her face, so slick and shiny as a mahogany burow. When she laughed she didn’t open her mouth like she used to; and she set up strait and still in her chair, and looked so different, but so monstrous pretty! I ax’d her a heap of questions, ’bout how she liked Macon, and the Female College, and so forth; and she told me a heap ’bout ’em. But old Miss Stallins and Miss Carline and Miss Kesiah, and all of ’em, kep all the time interruptin’ us, axin’ ’bout mother; if she was well, and if she was gwine to the Spring church next Sunday, and what luck she had with her crap, and all sich stuff, and I do believe I told the old women more’n twenty times that mother’s old turkey hen was settin’ on fourteen eggs.
Well, I wasn’t to be backed out that-a-way—so I kept it a goin’ the best I could, ’til bimeby old Miss Stallins let her knittin’ fall three or four times, and then begun to nod and snap back like a fishin’-pole that was all the time gitin’ bites. I seed the galls lookin’ at one another, and pinchin’ one another’s elbows, and Miss Mary said, she wondered what time it was, and said the college disciplines, or somethin’ like that, didn’t ’low late hours. I seed how the game was gwine—but howsumever, I kep talkin’ to her like a cotton gin in packin’ time, as hard as I could clip it, ’til bimeby the old lady went to bed, and arter a bit the gals all cleared, and left Miss Mary to herself. That was jest the thing I wanted.
“Well, she sot on one side of the fire-place, and I sot on t’other, snuffin’ ashes, war there was nothin’ but a lighted chunk burnin’ to give light. Well, we talked, and I know you would like to hear all we talked about, but that would be too long. When I’m very interested in anything, or git bothered ’bout anything, I always leans forred and pokes the fire, if there be any. Well, we sot thar and talked, ’bout everything a’most. I axed her if she had any bos down to Macon.
“ ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, and then she went on and named over Matthew Matin, Nat Filosophy, and a whole heap of fellers with foreign, outlandish names, that she’d been kepin’ company with ’most all her time.
“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘I s’pose they’re ’mazin’ poplar with you, ain’t they, Miss Mary?’ for I felt mighty oneasy, and dug away at the fire like anything.
“ ‘Yes,’ ses she, ‘they’re the most interestin’ companions I ever had, and I am anxious to resume their pleasant society.’
“I tell you what, that sort o’ stumped me, and I poked up the fire and made it ‘flicker and flare’ like the mischief; it was a good thing it did, for I blushed as blue as a Ginny squash.
“ ‘Then I s’pose you’r gwine to forget old acquaintances,’ ses I, ‘sense you’s been to Macon, ’mong them lawyers and doctors; is you, Miss Mary? You thinks more of them than you does of anybody else, I s’pose?’
“ ‘Oh!’ ses she, ‘I’m devoted to them—I think of them day and night!’
“That was too much—it shot me right up, and I sot as still as could be for more’n a minute. I never felt so warm behind the ears afore in all my life. Thunder! how my blood did bile up all over me, and I felt like I could knock Matthew Matin into a squash if he’d only been thar. Miss Mary sot with her handkerchief up to her face, and I looked rite into the fire-place. The blue blazes was runnin’ round over the chunk, ketchin’ hold here and lettin’ go thar, sometimes gwine ’most out, and then blazin’ up a little. I couldn’t speak—and was makin’ up my mind for tellin’ her the siteation of my heart, when I gave the soft wood chunk a desperate poke, and slap it went right over, and out it went spang!