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

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THE WOMAN QUESTION.

“Wall,” says I, “I can’t advise you. I wouldn’t marry, if I thought it was a goin’ to kill ten or a dozen; and I wouldn’t marry anyway, unless I got a chance.”

“Chance!” says he haughtily. “Why, there haint a woman in the country but what would jump to have me; that is,” says he in a reasonable tone, “if they wasn’t too old to jump, or wasn’t disabled in some way, rheumatiz, or sunthin, or sprains. They all want me.”

“Why,” says I, tryin’ to chirk him up, and make him feel better, “I thought it was right the other way. I thought you had got the mitten more’n a dozen times. There was Polly Bamber”—

“Oh, well. Polly Bamber loved me to distraction. She tried to conceal it from me. She refused me, thinkin’ it would make me fiercer to marry her. But she got fooled. I only asked her three times. She was waitin’ for the fourth, and I spose she was as disapinted as a girl ever was. I was sorry for her; my heart fairly ached for her; but I had a man’s dignity to keep up, and I left her.”