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

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“How old should you take the Widder Bump to be, Samantha?”

“Oh, about my age, or a little older, probable,” says I. “What makes you ask?”

“Oh, nothin’,” says he, and he sort o’ went to whistlin’, and I went on with my knittin’. But anon, or mebby a little before anon, he spoke out agin, and says he:

“The Widder Bump is good lookin’ for a widder, hain’t she? And a crackin’ good cook. Sometimes,” says he in a pensive way, “sometimes I have almost thought she went ahead of you on nutcakes.”

Her nutcakes was pretty fair ones, and midelin’ good shaped, and I wuzn’t goin’ to deny it, and so I says:

“What of it, Josiah? What if she duz?”

There hain’t a envious hair in my head (nor many gray ones for a woman of my age, though I say it that shouldn’t). I hain’t the woman to run down another woman’s nutcakes. My principles are like brass, as has been often remarked. If a woman can make lighter nutcakes than I can (which, give me good flour and plenty of sour cream, and eggs, and other ingregiencies, I shall never believe they can)—why, if they can, runnin’ down their nutcakes don’t make mine any higher up. There is where folks make a mistake—they think that runnin’ other folks down lifts them higher up; but it don’t, not a inch.