“You deah little motherless things.” Then she tried to kiss ’em. But the biggest one gripped her by her false hair, which was flax, and I should think by a careless estimate, that he pulled out about enough to make half a knot of thread. The little one didn’t do much harm, only I think he loosened her teeth a little, he hit her pretty near the mouth, and I thought as she arose she slipped ’em back in thier place. But she only said, “Sweet! sweet little things, how ardent and impulsive they are, so like thier deah Pa.” She took out her work, and says she, “I have come to spend the day. I saw thier deah Pa bringin’ the deah little twins in heah, and I thought maybe I could comfort the precious little motherless things some, if I should come over heah. If there is any object upon the earth, Josiah Allen’s wife, that appeals to a feelin’ heart, it is the sweet little children of widowers. I cannot remember the time when I did not want to comfort them, and thier deah Pa’s. I have always felt that it was woman’s highest speah, her only mission to soothe, to cling, to smile, to coo. I have always felt it, and for yeahs back it has been a growin’ on me. I feel that you do not feel as I do in this matter, you do not feel that it is woman’s greatest privilege, her crowning blessing, to soothe lacerations, to be a sort of a poultice to the noble, manly breast when it is torn with the cares of life.” This was too much, in the agitated frame of mind I then was. “Am I a poultice Betsey Bobbet, do I look like one?--am I in the condition to be one?” I cried turnin’ my face, red and drippin’ with prespiration towards her, and then attacked one of Josiah’s shirt sleeves agin. “What has my sect done,” says I, as I wildly rubbed his shirt sleeves, “That they have got to be lacerator soothers, when they have got everything else under the sun to do?” Here I stirred down the preserves that was a runnin’ over, and turned a pail full of syrup into the sugar kettle. “Everybody says that men are stronger than women, and why should they be treated as if they was glass china, liable to break all to pieces if they haint handled careful. And if they have got to be soothed,” says I in an agitated tone, caused by my emotions (and by pumpin’ 6 pails of water to fill up the biler), “Why don’t they get men to sooth’em? They have as much agin time as wimmen have; evenin’s they don’t have anything else to do, they might jest as well be a soothin’ each other as to be a hangin’ round grocery stores, or settin’ by the fire whittlin’.” I see I was frightenin’ her by my delerious tone and I continued more mildly, as I stirred down the strugglin’ sugar with one hand--removed a cake from the oven with the other--watched my apple preserves with a eagle vision, and listened intently to the voice of the twins, who was playin’ in the woodhouse.