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 to him. But I knew that jest the minute he got cooled off, his sense would return and his affection for me (he had acted all the while jest as if I wuz prickin' him a-purpose, and talked to that effect, and seemed mad at me as he could be). But I sot demute, and he didn't like that, his state wuz such. Sez he:

"Set there and not say a word, will you! I should think if a man lay dead at your door you would speak up and say sunthin', but no, you don't care enough about it to say a word. Oh, gracious Peter! did any human bein' ever suffer what I am sufferin'!"

And then he jumped up and stumbled over a stool and most fell and yelled out at me settin' there peaceful, "Put that stool in my way, will you! I'll clear this house of every stool to-morrow if I'm alive! the one that made that man-ketcher is a fool!"

And so it went on for most an hour, but Josiah got over it jest as soon as the pain stopped, he acted like a new man. And he asked me of his own accord before night if I didn't want to buy a new kind of hens, if I thought best he would buy some Shanghais and Ayrshires. Josiah is a clever critter pretty near half the time, and before he slept he offered to buy me a new stool, or two of 'em, covered with rep. Good land! it all come out jest as I knew it would, I had passed through too many cryses jest like it to be skaired. Why, when I married Josiah Allen I took all these resks, I knew how it would be, my father wuz a man, and so wuz my youngest brother and Uncle John, and I had lived in the house with 'em all. I don't blame Josiah so very much, I don't spoze he could help actin'.

Now, wimmen can't help actin' in some respects, such as this, if company comes through the front gate onex