Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/44

 more of her than we did of any of the neighbors, though we used her well, and she sot down and took her pug into her lap, for Maggie's cat riz up her back that high at the sight of it that I thought it would break into, and I got up and let her out.

I knew what the call wuz for, it wuz to molify Thomas J. and make him willin' to take her case in hand. Well, she wuz dretful good to Maggie, over good, I thought; she called her lots of kinder foolish names, "Petteet Ongey," and "belle amey," and lots of other trash. Maggie's name hain't Amy, nor never wuz.

Maggie took it all in good part and sot there smilin' and holdin' little Snow close to her heart. Miss Green Smythe didn't notice the baby at all, no more than as if it wuz a rag babe. But she begun to talk about a big entertainment she wuz goin' to have and wanted us to come to, and she called it a real curous name, it sounded some like Fate Sham Peter.

I guess it wuzn't exactly that, for it sounded so curous to me I sez to her, sez I, "I spoze Peter is all for fashion and outside gildin' and sham, and that's how he got his name?" And I sez, "Is Peter any relation of yourn?" And then she explained it out to me as well as she could.

But I sez, "I guess I'll call it Sham Peter, for that is nigh enough to distinguish it from other Peter's and other shams, and that is the main thing."

She acted as if she didn't like it, and answered my questions kinder short and uppish. I never took to her, for I had hearn all these things I have sot down about her babies and husbands and danglers and everything, and I spozed like as not I should have to give her a piece of my mind before she left; I spozed that I might have to onbeknown to me.