"My little wentersome one!" says John; and finding that that but very inadequately expressed what he felt, he repeated it, with slight alteration, "My wentersome little one!" at the same time lifting his eyes to heaven and shaking his finger in a menacing way at the air.
"Me—your own—headlong at his heels," whispered the widow, softly. And then she boxed his ear with the tips of her fingers, and then he said he would love to have her a-boxin' on 'em forever, and then she laughed incredulously, and then she went on:—
'Stop, you willain, till I ontie myself,' says I.
"'Ontie me, you wixen!' says he, 'who cares whether you are ontied or not?' and he histed the winder,—a two-story winder it was,—and out he went!"
"My brain is a-reelin'!" cries John. "You poor dewoted dove!"
"Dewoted, sure enough," says the widow, "and dewoted you'd 'a' thought if you'd 'a' seen me; for up he hists the winder, and out he goes. Now there was the framework of a new house—a great skeleton like—standin' alongside of us, and into that he waults, and I waults after him,—for what could I do but wault?—and away he goes from beam to beam, and from jice to jice, and from scantlin' to scantlin', waultin' up and up, and me waultin' after,—for what could I do but wault?—and cryin' with all my might, 'You willain!' and he a-cryin' back, 'You wixen!' and the moon a-shinin' like a blaze, and the meetin' folks goin' by, and my night-gownd a-floppin', and both of us plain wisible!
"'Help! murder!' I cries, for my salwation depended on it, and, seein' the meetin' folks adwance, he just waulted from the timber onto which we stood right into the thin and insupportable air—"
"And dragged you after him? Lord 'a' mercy!" cried John.
"No," says the widow, speaking with great calmness; "my presence of mind never forsook me,—I was an undertaker's daughter, and adwantage of birth prewailed over the disadwantage of position,—I waulted down the tother side; and there we hung balanced into the air, and there we would have hung all night but for the accident of the rewival.
"When they cut us down,—which one of the rewival folks did with his jack-knife,—I woluntarily fainted away, and was carried in for dead, and didn't rewive, and wouldn't rewive, for hours and hours. La me! I was so ashamed!"