MRS. MARCH'S BOARDERS 189
“Take city fiddlesticks!” says he, whittling away on a round stick with a hole through it.
“No,” says I, “‘boarders. Mrs. Brown made money last summer, and I mean to see if I can’t do as well as her. My Melissy is crazy after one of them new-fashioned pepperlambs that they wear hitched onto the waists of their gounds, and I ‘calkerlate she shall have it. And Isaac needs a new bedstead in his room, and I mean to have some furniture in the fore room, jest like Mrs. Brown’s.”
“You can do as you’re a mind to,” says Lemuel, kinder cross like; ‘but if you do take boarders, you’ll'wish yer cake dough afore you git through. A scientific man hadn’t ort to be bothered! They'll put me back so on my machine that I shan’t git it ready to go to Washington till next winter.’ And I meant to use some of the money I shall git for the invention in buying that farm of Spencer’s.”’
“'Tain’t no use to talk,” says I, “I’m fully sot,” and he said no more, for he knows when I'm deetarmined on a thing that I hain’t easy persuaded to give it up.
I got Eustace Atkins, the schoolmaster over to the corner, to write me some advertisements to put into two of the Bosting papers, and he did it powerful. To have read what he writ you'd have thought our farm was a Paradise upon airth.
He called the house Poplar Lodge, and there hain’t but one popple on the farm that I know of, and that’s out back of the hog’-house.
Well, in three days, I was overrun with folks that had come out to see the primises. And most of ’em smelt of musk, and carried their heads dreadful high, and turned up their noses at everything. The men they tip-toed round among the cabbage-plants and ruty-beggars, and wondered what kind of flowers them things would turn into; and the women, they screeched; and held their smelling-bottles to their noses when the geese and turkeys chased ’em, and stuck out their necks at ’em, as them animals is apt to do.
The fifth day there was a feller came that I thought would do. His name was Henry Cliffe, and he was about as nice-looking a chap as you'll see anywhere out of a picter-book. He was tall, and wore one of these short coats that is a kind of a cross between a coat and a jacket, and he had a red neck-tye, and a buff Vest, jest as if he was reddy to be married.
His hair and eyes was black, and his mustache was black, too; and he kinder put me in mind of one of them pirats, or bandanna chief-tains, that we read about in the illustratiorated newspapers—them fellers that one is awfully afeard of, and yet sorter falls in love with at the same time.
I took him to once, and give him the north frunt chamber.
The same day there came a woman, all in black, and as handsome as a picter. She'd lost her husband not long afore, she said, and wanted to come out into the country to recooperate. -
I told her I didn’t know about the cooperating. It wasn’t common for women folks to larn the cooper’s trade; but then, if they was a going to vote, I didn’t know as there'd be anything onproper in their learning one of the men folks’ trade.
She laffed, and sed I didn’t quite understand her. Her health was poor, and she had come to the country to recruit.
And then she talked so pitifully of her grief and trouble, and flurrished her scented handkercher so sorrowfully around her eyes, that I agreed to take her. I gave her the south frunt chamber, and told her there was a young man by the name of Cliffe in tother, with black eyes, and a red neck-tye; and she sithed, and said black eyes and red neck-tyes were nothing to her now.
Her name was Myra Westley, and she came from New York.
I felt well pleased with her, for T calkerlated that being in trouble she wouldn't be likely to have much appetite. People don’t ginerally, you know. So thar’d be a saving.
The next day Mrs. Wilson came, with her three children, and I agreed to take ’em if they'd be contented to sleep in the tool-house chamber, because all my rooms was full. Mrs. Wilson was dreadful genteel, but she said she’d stay if she had to roost in a tree! For her neighbors, the Joneses, and the Smiths, and the Jenkinses, had all gone into the country, and she’d die but what she’d be as much as they was!
Them children of hern was awful! If you should sarch the world over from Californy to the Gulf of Mexico, you couldn’t find three such youngsters. Adolphus, he was twelve year old, and Katrina Adelaide was ten, and Ignatius Catterangus was seven.
They provoked Lemuel’s life out of him. Dolph, as his ma called him, cut Lem’s machine all up to kindle a brush-heap with: and Adelaide tore the picters out of his Patent-Office Reports, and papered the hen-house with ’em; and Angus, the little one, he upsoot my whole
