Читать книгу My Wayward Pardner; or, My Trials with Josiah, America, the Widow Bump, and Etcetery онлайн

28 страница из 60

Oh! how my conscience smited me as I heard them words—it smited and smarted like a burn. Yet at the same time his words kind o’ chirked me up, they made me think what a powerful arrow I had in my hands to shoot down my sorrow with. They made me feel that it wuzn’t too late to save my pardner, and that was a sweet thought to me.

Yes, with a thankful and grateful heart, I grasped holt of that weepon that had defended me so many times before on hard battlefields of principle. I held that weepon firm and upright as a spear, and says I:

“Josiah, you shall have as good a supper as hands can get.” Says I, “Besides the common run of vittles we jenerally have for supper, cake and tarts and such stuff, what do you say, Josiah Allen, to havin’ a briled chicken, and toast, and mashed-up potatoes, and cream biscuit, and peaches?”

His mean changed in a minute. I never see a mean in my hull life look more radient than hisen did as I spoke them words. And my breast heaved with such happy and grateful emotion that it most bust off 2 buttens in front (them buttens wuzn’t what they was recommended to be; there was sunthin’ wrong about ’em in the shanks). Though the mournful and mysterious episode and Widder Bump was remembered, yet I felt a feelin’ that I should win my pardner back—I should save his sole alive.