But it must have been when I was out a gettin’ dinner. For if I was under oath I would say that I didn’t hear him say a single thing to it, only jest this:
“Do you want a pair of boots?”
They started for home jest after dinner, Nathan havin’ left some work that must be done. And Josiah hitched up and went to Jonesville to mill. And I s’pose he told the news about Kitty there. But it wuzn’t till the next afternoon that I heard what the effects of that news wuz in a certain place and to a certain feller.
And though it hain’t always best to mention names, and come right out plain and talk, yet it probable won’t do no hurt to mention that you might expect Kellup Cobb, under any circumstances, would act like a fool.
THRILLING NEWS.
I was down to the creek lot, pickin’ a few berries for supper, when Josiah told me on’t. It had got a little later than I thought for, and Josiah had come down after me, bein’ worried about me. It was only a little ways from the house. I had put the tea-kettle on, and sot the table, before I had come out, and the tea-kettle was a bilin’, so Josiah said, after he told me the news. The news was thrillin’ and agitatin’ in the extreme. He said Kellup Cobb had disappeared the night before, after the news of Kitty’s marriage had got abroad in Jonesville. They said that he felt so that he disappeared, he and the hearse and Elder Judas Wart—the hull three on ’em. Kellup had been on intimate terms with Judas Wart for some time; and some think that Kellup bein’ so cut down by Kitty’s marriage, and the Elder bein’ so cut down by my witherin’ eloquence and Josiah’s broom-handle, that they both got into the hearse, and drove off in it to Utah to jine the Mormons. And some think that they sold the hearse, and took the money, and went to Salt Lake by rail. Which last way, I told my Josiah, when he mentioned it, was the proper way to go there, if it wuz the right kind of a rail. But anyway, they had gone, the hull three on ’em, and there hain’t been a word heard from ’em sense in Jonesville.
Josiah said old Cobb felt awfully.
Says I, “To lose Kellup?”
“No,” says he, “to lose the hearse.”