“Widder Doodle, how under the sun did you come here to the Sentinal?”
Says she, “Samantha, I am married; I am on my tower.”
Says I in faint axents, “Who to?”
“Solomon Cypher,” says she.
Again I thought almost wildly of burnt feathers, for it seemed so fearfully curious to think she should be a double and twisted ort, as you may say; should be a ort by name, after bein’ one by nater all her days. But again the thought come to me, that I had no conveniences for faintin’ away, and I must be calm, so says I, “Married to Solomon Cypher!”
And then it all come back to me—their talk the day he come to borry my clothes for the mourners; her visits to his housekeeper sense; and his strange and almost foolish errants to our house from day to day; but I didn’t speak my thoughts, I only said:
“Widder Doodle, what ever put it into your head to marry again?”
Well, she said she had kinder got into the habit of marryin’, and it seemed some like a second nater to her—and she thought Solomon had some of Doodle’ses linement—so she thought she would marry him. She said he offered himself in a dretful handsome style; she said the childern of the Abbey, or Thadeus of Warsaw couldn’t done it up in any more foamin’ and romantic way; she said he was a bringin’ her home in his wagon from a visit I remembered her makin’ to his housekeeper.
“Three weeks after his wife’s death!” says I.
“Yes,” says she, “Solomon said the corpse wouldn’t be no deader than she was then, if he waited three months, as some men did.” Says she, “The way on’t was, I was a praisin’ up his horse and wagon—a new double wagon with a spring seat—when all of a sudden he spoke out in a real ardent and lover like tone: ‘Widder Doodle, if you will be my bride, the wagon is yourn, and the mares.’ Says he, ‘Widder, I throw myself onto your feet, and I throw the wagon and mares onto ’em; and with them and me, I throw eighty-five acres of good land, fourteen cows, five calves, four three year olds and a yearlin’, a dwellin’ house, a good horse barn, and myself. I throw ’em all onto your feet, and there we lay on ’em.’