Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/264

 He see himself, as quick as his attention wuz drawed to it, that a babe in long white dresses ortn't to have gray whiskers and a bald head.

"Well," sez he, "what do you say to a Pirate or a Bandit chief? I could buy a piece of red and yeller creeton, figgered, and a piece of striped for a sash. They're always depictered in dime novels as bein' very dressy with feathers, and I could kinder jam in the top of my hat and put some feathers in it, I could buy a couple of turkey wings of Nate Enders, he deals in turkeys, and I have to go most to his house to go to the store—what do you say, Samantha? Or, would you go as a Shepherd Boy, or how would you go?"

I wuz wore out, and I sez, "I would go as a natteral fool, Josiah, and you wouldn't have to buy anything or change a mite to do it."

"Yes, there it is; keep right on, I never knew it to fail in my life; I never yet got a chance to enter fashionable life and show off a little but you tried to break it up." Sez he still more pitiful, "I always wanted to look fancy, Samantha, and you've never seemed willin'. I don't say that you are jealous of my looks, for I don't think you are any such a woman, but I will say it looks queer, but now there is a chance for me to look gay, and I am goin' to embrace it."

Jest that minute the girl with the cap on come into the room agin, and I nudged him to keep still, but he wouldn't. I enticed him over to the winder and argued with him there. My voice wuz real low, but he wuz so excited and spoke so loud the girl must have got a inklin' of what he wuz sayin', and, seein' the dilemma I wuz in, she spoke right up and sez with her queer little axent: