"The former Miss Bark puts up that nursin' game with Peets, an' day an' night she hangs over her apoplectic father-in-law like a painter over a picture. She's certainly as cunnin' as a pet fox! She dresses as quiet as a quail an' makes her voice as softly sober as a 93 suckin' dove's. In the end she's got that patient hypnotized.
"After Peets declar's him out of danger, an' all propped up in his blankets he's subscribed to mighty likely it's the fifth drink, the apoplectic begins to shed tears a heap profoose, an' relate to his nurse––the former Miss Bark––how his two wives has died, leavin' him a lonely man. She, the former Miss Bark, is his only friend––he says––an' he winds up his lamentations by recommendin' that she become his third.
"'You're the only hooman heart who ever onderstands me,' he wails, gropin' for her hand, 'an' now my ongrateful boy has contracted a messalliance I shore wants you for my wife.'
"She hangs her head like a flower at night, an' lets on she's a heap confoosed.
"'Speak,' he pleads; 'tell me that you'll be mine.'
"'Which I'd shore admire to, but I can't,' she murmurs; 'I'm wedded to your son.'
"The old apoplectic asks for more licker in a dazed way, an' sends for Peets. The Doc an' 94 him goes into execyootive session for most an hour; meanwhile the camp's on edge.
"At the close the Doc eemerges plumb radiant.
"'Everything's on velvet,' he says; 'thar's never a more joodicious convalescent. He freely admits, considerin' the sort of daughter-in-law he's acquired, that Oscar has more sense than folks suspects.'
"Now that the skies is cl'ared, the bridegroom is fetched back from Red Dog, an' thar's a grand reeconciliation.