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

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Says he: “When I think of Jane Sofier Burpy. When I think what my feelin’s was as I drove her hearse to the buryin’-ground. When I think how I felt durin’ that ride—why, I think I will never meddle again with any women, in any way, shape, nor manner. When I think how she wilted right down like a untimely flower cut down by the destroyer.”

“Why,” says I, “she died with a bile; that was what ailed her,—a carbuncle on her back.”

“Yes,” says he, with a unbelievin’ look on his face, “so the doctors said; so the cold world said. But I think it was sunthin’ deeper.”

HOW JANE WAS ROPED IN.

“Why,” says I, “a bile couldn’t go no deeper than her’n went. It was dreadful. It was the death of her.”

Says he: “I have always had my own idee of what ailed her. I know what that idee is, and I know what a guilty conscience is. I wuzn’t careful enough. I didn’t mean no harm to her, Heaven knows I didn’t. But I wuzn’t careful enough. I boarded two weeks with her mother the spring before she died. And I can see now where I missed it, where I did wrong. I wuzn’t offish enough to her. I treated her too friendly. I was off my guard, and didn’t notice how my attractions was bein’ too much for her.