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At that moment Bill turned from his contemplation of the house beyond the dumps and fixed his fierce eyes on Sunny's grinning face. "Here, you miser'ble hoboe," he cried, "get right up out of that, and hump across to Zip's shack. You're doin' enough gassin' fer a female tattin' bee. Your hot air makes me want to sweat. Now, them kiddies'll need supper.
I'm glad you thought of it, John." John looked up, surprised. "Me? Drusilla! It never entered my head." "Didn't it? Well, you ought to 'a' thought of it before, and it'd all be done now. Here we've wasted all these months, and I've been pestered to death with 'em both. She's done more tattin' settin' in my sun parlor than'd trim all the petticoats in Brookvale.
But thinkses I as I carried her things into my bedroom, "She'll want to send some errent by me"; and I wondered what it would be. And so it didn't surprise me when she asked me if I would lobby a little for her in Washington. I spozed it wuz some new kind of tattin' or fancy work. I told her I shouldn't have much time but would try to git her some if I could.
To most a seen of happiness, but to me they seemed like shadders; the Reality of life, my beloved pardner, wuz lost, lost to me. A pleasant lookin' female standin' by, seein' the emotion in my face, and wantin' to cheer me up, I spoze, sez: "Have you tried the Loop de Loop?" I answered with a sad dignity, "Yes, I've done considerable tattin' in my day." "Mebby you'd like to try the Bump de Bump."
And so, as I say, we turned round in our tracts and went back round that noble Adminstration Buildin' Josiah a-talkin' anon or oftener about what he expected to see in the Woman's Buildin', every one on 'em light and triflin' things, such as gauzes, and artificial flowers, and cossets, and high-heel shoes, and placks, and tattin', and etc.
But these allusions to pancakes had brung me down, so I stepped meekly out on to the broad, noble flight of steps, and the full beauty of the Woman's Buildin' riz up in front of us. Even Josiah wuz impressed with the simple, noble perfection of that buildin'. I heard him say "By Crackey! not a bit of lace or tattin'; not a streamer of ribbin.
Jane she knits some, an' she kin do a lot o' fine herrin'-bonin' an' tattin' an' tambour wuck; but spinnin' an' weavin' an' mekin' candles an' soap, an' sich useful emplements, she don't consarn about no more'n my Lucindy an' Lucy. Henry, ef you eat any more o' thet bacon, you'll be squealin' lak a pig, befoh mawnin'. Hev some more honey, Mistah Dudley."
He leaned forward with that disagreeable boughten smile of hisen and took up one corner of my mantilly, it wuz cut tab fashion, and he took up the tab and said in a low insinuatin' voice, lookin' clost at the edge of the tab: "Am I mistaken, or is this beautiful creation pipein' or can it be Kensington tattin'?"
I told him that the Streets of Seville interested me, for it wuz planned by a woman, the only woman who ever received a concession in a amusement street of a Exposition. And Josiah sez, "I shall spend my money on sunthin' of more importance; it probable all runs to crazy quilts and tattin." But it wuz no such thing, it wuz perfectly beautiful, as I've hearn folks say that have been there.
He opened the subject one day by remarkin' that he spozed I had never hearn of the Louisana Purchase. He said that the minds of females in their leisure hours bein' took up by more frivolous things, such as tattin' and crazy bed-quilts, he spozed that I, bein' a female woman, had never hearn on't.
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