Besides tending her shop, and cutting and trimming, and all that, Miss Josephine Burgess found time to do a leetle courting, over work, with a finefied sort of a 'pothecary feller that sold doctor stuff over the way agin her store. But she didn't let this take up much of her time, nor no sich thing--she wasn't a gal to let her heart run away with her head, any how they could fix it. While the finefied stuck up leetle 'pothecary shut up his shop over the way, and sot more'n half the time twisting up the thread and leetle bits of ribbon that Miss Josephine Burgess snipped off with a pair of sharp pinted scissors, hitched to her side by a black watch guard, and kept a puckering up his mouth and a talking darned finefied nonsense, as sweet as the jujube paste, and the peppermint drops that he brought in his trousers' pocket, she sot as independent as a cork-screw, with one foot stuck upon a bonnet block, a twisting up bows, and a sticking pins and feathers into a heap of silk and millinery stuff. Once in a while she managed to stick a peppermint drop into her leetle mouth, and to turn her eyes to the 'pothecary with _sich_ a look, so soft and killing, it went right straight through his heart, like a pine skewer through a chunk of butcher's meat. There was never anything went on so slick as these critters did, arter they took to hankering arter each other--it raly was better than a play to see how they got along. The 'pothecary chap was a sneezer at figures. He'd cyphered thro' Dayboll's Arithmetic three times, and could say off the multiplication table without stopping to catch breath. So he sometimes overhauled the milliner's books, not because he wanted to know any thing about them, but 'cause women folks are so apt to be imposed on. He writ out her leetle bills, and kept a sort of running notion of her cash accounts, for she warn't much of a judge of money, and so always sent her bank bills over to his shop to know whether they were ginuine or not. She did all these leetle trifles in a delicate genteel sort of a way, that was sartinly very gratifying and pleasant to the 'pothecary; he raly begun to fat up and grow pussy on the strength on't; it wouldn't aben human natur if he hadn't. Miss Josephine Burgess was a setting in her back shop a thinking over the 'pothecary chap, and the dollars and cents she'd skinned out of the gals' wages that week, a making them work at half price because the _times were so bad_, when the 'pothecary came a tip-toeing through the store looking as tickled as if he'd found a sixpence. He took two ball tickets out of his vest pocket and held one on 'em out to the milliner, and stood a bowing and a grinning like a darned babboon till she read the writin' on it. "I raly don't know what to say," sez she, "I never have been to the Tammany hall, and I--I----"