“Wall,” says he, “you go yourself mother sometime, and see thier carryin’s on. Why,” says he, “if fightin’ entitles anybody to a pension, they ought to draw 96 dollars a year, every one of ’em—you go yourself, and hear ’em rehearse if you don’t believe me—” and then he begun to sing,
‘Just before the battle, mother,
I am thinkin’ now of you.’
“I’ll be hanged if I would rehearse,” says Josiah, “what makes ’em?”
“Let ’em rehearse,” says I sternly, “I should think there was need enough of it.”
It happened that very next night, Elder Merton preached to the red school house, and Josiah hitched up the old mare, and we went over. It was the first time I had been out sense the axident. Thomas J. and Tirzah Ann walked.
Josiah and I sot right behind the quire, and we could hear every word they said, and while Elder Merton was readin’ the hymn, “How sweet for brethren to agree,” old Gowdey whispered to Mr. Peedick in wrathful accents,
“I wonder if you will put us all to open shame to-night by screechin’ two or three notes above us all?”
He caught my keen grey eye fixed sternly upon him, and his tone changed in a minute to a mild, sheepish one, and he added smilin’ “as it were, deah brother Peedick.”
Mr. Peedick designed not to reply to him, for he was shakin’ his fist at one of the younger brethrin’ in the quire, and says he,