Samantha at Saratoga [41]
a boardin' to the same place we did. She dressed some like a young man, carried a cane, etc. But she wuz one of the upper 10, and wuz as pretty as a picture, and I see Josiah had kinder sot his eyes on her as bein' a good one to try his experiment with. He thought she wuz beautiful. But good land! I didn't care. I liked her myself. But I could see, though he couldn't see it, that she wuz one of the girls who would flirt with the town pump, or the meetin' house steeple, if she couldn't get nobody else to flirt with. She wuz born so, but I suppose ontirely unbeknown to her when she wuz born. Wall, Josiah Allen would set and look at her by the hour -- dretful admirin'. But good land! I didn't care. I loved to look at her myself. And then too I had this feelin' that his morals wuz sound. But after awhile, I could see, and couldn't help seein', that he wuz a tryin' in his feeble way to flirt with her. And I told him kindly, but firmly, "that it wuz somethin' that I hated to see a goin' on." But he says, "Well, dumb it all, Samantha, if anybody goes to a fashionable place, they ort to try to be fashionable. 'Taint nothin' I want to do, and you ort to know it." And I says in pityin' axents but firm, "If you don't want to, Josiah, I wouldn't, fashion or no fashion." But I see I couldn't convince him, and there happened to be a skercity of men jest then -- and he kep' it up, and it kep' me on the key veav, as Maggie says, when she is on the tenter hooks of suspense. I felt bad to see it go on, not that I wuz jealous, no, my foretop lay smooth from day to day, not a jealous hair in it, not one -- but I felt sorry for my companion. I see that while the endurin' of it wuz hard and tejus for him (for truly he was not a addep at the business; it come tuff, feerful tuff on him), the endin' wuz sure to be harder. And I tried to convince him, from a sense of duty, that she wuz makin' fun of him -- he had told me lots of the pretty things she had said to him -- and out of principle I told him that she didn't mean one word of 'em. But I couldn't convince him, and as is the way of pardners, after I had sot the reasen and the sense before him, and he wouldn't hear to me, why then I had to set down and bear it. Such is some of the trials of pardners? Wall, it kep' agoin' on, and a goin' on, and I kep' a hatin' to see it, for if anybody has got to flirt, which I am far from approvin' of, but if I have got to see it a goin' on, I would fain see it well done, and Josiah's efforts to flirt wuz like an effort of our old mair to play a tune on the melodian, no grace in it, no system, nor comfort to him, nor me. I s'pose the girl got some fun out of it; I hope she did, for if she didn't it wuz a wearisome job all round. Wall, a week or so rolled on, and it wuz still in progress. And one day an old friend of ours, Miss Ezra Balch, from the east part of Jonesville, come to see me. She come to Saratoga for the rheumatiz, and wuz gettin' well fast, and Ezra was gettin' entirely cured of biles, for which he had come, carbunkles. Wall, she invited Josiah and me to take a ride with 'em, and we both accepted of it, and at the appointed time I wuz ready to the minute, down on the piazza, with my brown cotton gloves on, and my mantilly hung gracefully over my arm. But at the last minute, Josiah Allen said "he couldn't go." I says "Why can't you go?" "Oh," he says, kinder drawin' up his collar, and smoothin' down his vest, "Oh, I have got another engagement." He looked real high-headed, and I says to him: "Josiah Allen didn't you promise Druzilla Balch that you would go with her and Ezra to-day?" "Wall yes," says he, "but I can't." "Why not?" says I. "Wall, Samantha, though they are well meanin', good people, they haint what you may call fashionable, they haint the upper 10." Says I, "Josiah Allen you have fell over 15 cents in my estimation, sense we have begun talkin', you won't go with 'em because they haint fashionable. They are good, honest Christian Methodists, and have stood by you and me many a time, in times of trouble, and now,"