“No! Josiah Allen, no! anything but bringin’ grief and trouble onto perfect strangers jest because they happened to be born second cousin to you, unbeknown to ’em;” and I repeated with icy firmness—for I see he was a hankerin’ awfully,—“Josiah Allen I will not encamp upon Captain Kidd through the Sentinal.”
No! Miss Lampheare was my theme, and my gole, and all boyed up with hope we arrove at her dwellin’ place. Miss Lampheare met us at the door herself. She was a tall spindlin’ lookin’ woman, one that had seen trouble—for she had always kep’ boarders, and had had four husbands, and buried ’em in a row, her present one bein’ now in a decline. When I told her who I was, she met me with warmth and said that any friend of she that was Alminy Dickey was dear to her. But friendship, let it be ever so ardent can not obtain cream from well water, or cause iron bedsteads to stretch out like Injy Rubber. She had expected us sooner, if we come at all, and her house was overflowin’—every bed, lounge, corner and cupboard, being occupied, and the buro and stand draws made up nightly for childern.
What _was_ we to do? Night would soon let down her cloudy mantilly upon Josiah and me, and what was to become of us. Miss Lampheare seemed to pity us, and she directed us to a friend of hers; that friend was full; he directed us to another friend; that friend was overflowin’. And so it went on till we was almost completely tired out. At last Josiah come out of a house, where he had been seekin’ rest and findin’ it not; says he:
“They said mebby we could git a room at the ‘Grand Imposition Hotel.’” So we started off there, Josiah a scoldin’ every step of the way, and a sayin’:
“I told you jest how it would be, we ort to have gone to Captain Kidd’s.”
I didn’t say nothin’ back on the outside for I see by his face that it was no time for parley. But my mind was firm on the inside, to board in grocery stores, and room under my umberell, before I threw myself onto a perfect stranger through the Sentinal.
But a recital of our agony of mind and body will be of little interest to the gay, and only sadden the tender hearted; and suffice it to say in a hour’s time, we was a follerin’ the hired man to a room in the “Grand Imposition Hotel.”