Now last Monday, no sooner did I get my hands into the suds holt of one of Josiah’s dirty shirts, than the sugar would mount up in the kettle and sozzle over on the top of the furnace in the summer kitchen--or else the preserves would swell up and drizzle over the side of the pan on to the stove--or else the puddin’ I was a bakin’ for dinner would show signs of scorchin’, and jest as I was in the heat of the warfare, as you may say, who should drive up but the Editor of the Agur. He was a goin’ on further, to engage a hired girl he had hearn of, and on his way back, he was goin’ to stop and read that poetry, and eat some maple sugar; and he wanted to leave the twins till he come back.
Says he, “They won’t be any trouble to you, will they?” I thought of the martyrs, and with a appearance of outward composure, I answered him in a sort of blind way; but I won’t deny that I had to keep a sayin’, ‘John Rogers! John Rogers’ over to myself all the time I was ondoin’ of ’em, or I should have said somethin’ I was sorry for afterwards. The poetry woried me the most, I won’t deny.
After the father drove off, the first dive the biggest twin made was at the clock, he crep’ up to that, and broke off the pendulum, so it haint been since, while I was a hangin’ thier cloaks in the bedroom. And while I was a puttin’ thier little oversocks under the stove to dry, the littlest one clim’ up and sot down in a pail of maple syrup, and while I was a wringin’ him out, the biggest one dove under the bed, at Josiah’s tin trunk where he keeps a lot of old papers, and come a creepin’ out, drawin’ it after him like a hand-sled. There was a gography in it, and a Fox’es book of martyrs, and a lot of other such light reading, and I let the twins have ’em to recreate themselves on, and it kep’ ’em still most a minute.
I hadn’t much more’n got my eye off’en that Fox’es book of Martyrs--when there appeared before ’em a still more mournful sight, it was Betsey Bobbet come to spend the day.
I murmured dreamily to myself “John Rogers”--But that didn’t do, I had to say to myself with firmness--“Josiah Allen’s wife, haint you ashamed of yourself, what are your sufferin’s to John Rogers’es? Think of the agony of that man--think of his 9 children follerin’ him, and the one at the breast, what are your sufferin’s compared to his’en?” Then with a brow of calm I advanced to meet her. I see she had got over bein’ mad about the surprise party, for she smiled on me once or twice, and as she looked at the twins, she smiled 2 times on each of ’em, which made 4 and says she in tender tones,