Читать книгу Vesty of the Basins - Sarah Pratt McLean Greene - Страница 7

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They never noticed my physical misfortune except in this way: they invited me everywhere; to mill, to have the horse shod, all voyages by sea or land; my visiting and excursion list was a marvel of repletion.

Captain Pharo came down—my soul's brother—with more of "a h'tch and a go," than usual in his gait.

"My woman read in some fool-journal somewheres, lately," he explained, "about pourin' kerosene on yer corns and then takin' a match to her and lightin' of her off.

"Wal', I supposed she was a-dressin' my corns down in jest the old usual way, last Sunday mornin', when—by clam! ye don't want to splice onto too young a shipmate, major." (This last was a divinely Basin thought, treating me as a subject of the wars.)

"I've married all states but widders," said Captain Pharo, with a blasé air of conjugal experience; "but my advice above all things is," he murmured, lifting his maimed foot, "don't splice onto too young a shipmate. They're all'as a-tryin' some new ructions on ye. Now Vesty, even as stiddy as she is, she 's all'as gittin' the women folks crazy over some new patron for a apern, or some new resute for pudd'n' and pie. So," he added, "ef you sh'd come to me, intendin' to splice, all the advice 't I c'd give 'ud be, I don't know widders; poo! poo!—hohum! Wal, wal—