My emotions paralyzed me for nearly a quarter of a minute, and then says I,
“To her folks’es,” says he, “But she will be here next week.”
Betsey drew near. He looked calmly and fearlessly at her, but he murmured gently, “The twins will be a wakin’ up; I must be a goin’,” and he gently retreated.
The first words Betsey said to me was, “Ketch hold of me Josiah Allen’s wife, ketch hold of me, I am on the very point of swooning.”
Then I knew what Deacon Gowdey had been a tellin’ her. She looked like a blue ghost, trimmed off with otter color, for she had on a blue parmetta dress all trimmed with annato colored trimmin’s. She murmured in almost incoherent words, somethin’ about “her dearest gazelle bein’ a dyin’, and her wantin’ to be took off to her buryin’ ground.” But I knew it was no time for me to show my pity; true friendship demanded firmness and even sternness, and when she asked me wildly agin to “ketch hold of her,” I says to her coldly,
“My lost, my dearest gazelle is a dyin’! my hopes are witherin’!” says she, shettin’ up her eyes and kinder staggerin’ up against the wall.
Says I in tones as cold as old Zero, or pretty nigh as cold as that old man,
But I see I must come out still more plainer, or she would make a public circus of herself, and says I pushin’ her into a corner, and standin’ up in front of her, so as to shet off the audience from her face, for she was a cryin’, and she did indeed look ghostly,
“Betsey Bobbet the gazelle is married, and their hain’t no use in your follerin’ on that trail no longer. Now,” says I, “take your bunnet and go home, and collect yourself together. And,” says I, generously “I will go with you as far as the door.”
So I got her started off, as quick, and as quiet as I could, and I guess there wasn’t mor’n seven men and 14 wimmen that asked me as I came back in,
“If it was the Editer of the Augur, that Betsey was a cryin’ about, and if I ever see such a idiot in my life?”
I answered ’em in a kind of blind way, and it broke up pretty soon.
When Josiah and me went home, as we passed Mr. Bobbet’ses, I looked up into Betsey’s winder which fronted the road, and I see Betsey set by her table a writin’. Her lips were firmly closed and she was a cryin’, her cheeks looked holler and I knew that her teeth was out, so I felt that she was writin’ poetry. I was right, for in the next weeks _Gimlet_ these verses came out. These lines was wrote on to the top of ’em: