'Shouldn't wonder,' sez Moses, 'nothin' ever did come up alive after
goin' over them falls.'
"It come over me like a streak of lightenin'; every thin' kinder
slewed round, and I dropped in the first faint I ever had in my
life. Next I knew Lisha was holdin' of me and cryin' fit to kill
himself. I thought I was dreamin', and only had wits enough to give
a sort of permiscuous grab at him and call out:
"'Oh, Lisha! ain't you drownded?' He give a gret start at that,
swallered down his sobbin', and sez as lovin' as ever a man did in
this world:
"'Bless your dear heart, Cynthy, it warn't me it was the pig;' and
then fell to kissin' of me, till betwixt laughin' and cryin' I was
most choked. Deary me, it all comes back so livin' real it kinder
takes my breath away."
And well it might, for the good soul entered so heartily into her
story that she unconsciously embellished it with dramatic
illustrations. At the slapping episode she flung an invisible "fork,
dish, and pertaters" into an imaginary kettle, and glared; when the
catastrophe arrived, she fell back upon her chair to express
fainting; gave Christie's arm the "permiscuous grab" at the proper
moment, and uttered the repentant Lisha's explanation with an
incoherent pathos that forbid a laugh at the sudden introduction of
the porcine martyr.
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