"I hev n't hed no great on 't," says John, "but I 've hed enough, sense I 've come into business, to know that if I hed to keep it a-chinkin' into my pocket I should n't value it much."
Then he corrected himself, and said walue.
"I 'll tell you how money is waluable to me," says the milliner, "if I may wenter so far?"
"Most certainly!" exclaimed John. "You could n't venter nothin' that would n't be to your credit,—I 'll vouch a fippenny bit on that!"
Then he repeated himself, substituting wenter, and wouch, in the places of the words previously used.
"Dear me! I should become wain o' myself if I thought your compliment was walid," says the milliner, dropping her eyes; but the next moment she gives her bonnet-strings a little flirt, and goes on in the sprightliest way about a hundred trifles,—one of which had no connection with another.
"You 've forgot what you sot out on!" says John, interrupting her at last; "and you kerried me away so, I was a-forgittin' on 't too. Howsever, it 's no odds, as I know on,—you make whatever you touch so interestin'!"
"O Captain! how you do warnish me up! I shall certainly wacate the premises when we come to port, if you don't stop sich things!—that is, if there's a single westige o' clear sky. But we were talking of the walue of money, was n't we?" She cast down her eyes again, and spoke with a sweet seriousness. "I walue money," she says, "when I see I can make another happy with it." And then she says her lot in life has been a wery lonely and sad one,—wersatile, but on the whole lonely, sometimes to the wery werge of despair!
"You don't say?" says John. "I certainly should n't 'a' thought it possible! Why, you don't mean to say you 've allers been alone in the world?"
Then she tells him how she thought she fell in love, at seventeen, with a green-grocer that turned out to be a miserable wagabond, inwesting all her earnings in whiskey and rum, and drinking them himself.