"get up and go home."

Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six feet high, and Miss Mary
trembled. He started forward a few paces and then stopped.

"Wass I go home for?" he suddenly asked, with great gravity.

"Go and take a bath," replied Miss Mary, eying his grimy person with
great disfavor.

To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his coat and vest,
threw them on the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plunging wildly
forward, darted headlong over the hill in the direction of the river.

"Goodness heavens! the man will be drowned!" said Miss Mary; and then,
with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse and
locked herself in. That night, while seated at supper with her
hostess, the blacksmith's wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely,
if her husband ever got drunk. "Abner," responded Mrs. Stidger
reflectively,--"let's see! Abner hasn't been tight since last
'lection." Miss Mary would have liked to ask if he preferred lying in
the sun on these occasions, and if a cold bath would have hurt him;
but this would have involved an explanation, which she did not then
care to give. So she contented herself with opening her gray eyes
widely at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger,--a fine specimen of
Southwestern efflorescence,--and then dismissed the subject
altogether. The next day she wrote to her dearest friend in Boston: "I
think I find the intoxicated portion of this community the least
objectionable, I refer, my dear, to the men, of course. I do not know
anything that could make the women tolerable."