You know when you hear of some marriages a part of you is pleased, mebby it is Common Sense, whilst Romance and Fancy has to set dumb and demute. Or mebby Fancy sings whilst cold Reason is spreadin’ a wet blanket on her part of the band, chillin’ the notes and spilein’ the instrument. But here Reason, Romance, Love and Common Sense all jined in together and sung the wedding anthem loud and clear.

But Miss Meechim, I felt dubersome about her; Dorothy didn’t mention her in her letter, bein’ so took up with Robert and Love, so I spozed. I knowed well how repugnant matrimony wuz to her and how sternly resolved she wuz that Dorothy should go through life a bachelor maid.

I hated to read Miss Meechim’s letter, I dreaded it like a dog. How did I know but her great disappointment and 469 crushin’ grief to see her hull life work smashed and demolished, had smit her down, and she had passed away writin’ my name on a envelope with her last flicker of life and some stranger pen had writ me of the tragedy.

I put the letter up on the mantletry piece and thought I wouldn’t read it till about a hour after dinner.

And whilst I wuz gittin’ dinner and eatin’ it and went about doin’ up my work afterwards, I eyed that letter some as a cat eyes a dog kennel and hung off from readin’ it. But wantin’ to git the hard job over before night sot in, about the middle of the afternoon I read a few verses of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, put two cushions in the rockin’ chair, took a swaller of spignut and thorough-o’-wort to kinder hold up my strength, and a few whiffs of camfire, and then I put on my near-to specs, opened the letter with a deep sithe and begun to read. But good land! I needn’t have foreboded so; I might have knowed that though her hatred of matrimony wuz great, her egotism and self esteem wuz bigger yet.

The letter stated in glowin’ terms her gratefulness to her Creator to think she had a nephew so bound up in her interest and welfare. She said that she had mentioned one day, durin’ a severe attack of bilerous colic her fears and forebodin’s about Dorothy’s future if she should succumb to the colic and leave her alone. She said that it wuzn’t a week after this that her nephew and Dorothy had confided to her the fact of their engagement.

Sez she, “Not one word to Dorothy have I mentioned or ever shall mention as to Robert’s reasons for sacrificin’ himself to ease my mind, and make me more care free. I wouldn’t for the world,” sez she, “have Dorothy suspect why Robert has made a martyr of himself, and to no one but you, Josiah Allen’s wife,” sez she, “shall I ever breathe it.” But she felt that she could confide in me, and wanted me to know just how it wuz.

So her colossial self esteem carried her through safely, and 470 she wuz as happy as any on ’em. She wuz goin’ to live in a little house Robert had bought for her in San Francisco. Martha, the steady English maid, wuz goin’ to live with her, as she had proved faithful. And she added a few heart breakin’ words of grief and mournfulness about our dear lost Aronette.

And she gin me to understand that sence Aronette’s dretful death in New York she had gradually changed her mind about drinking.

I believe Arvilly’s talk helped convince her, though Miss Meechim would never own it to her dyin’ day, and I d’no as Arvilly would want her to, they just naterally abominate each other.