Wall, I guess Melinda Ann had been there about a week, and as well as I liked Aunt Melinda, and as well as I loved duty, I wuz a beginnin’ to feel perfectly beat out and fearfully run down in my mind and depressted, for fits is depresstin’, no matter how much duty and nobility of soul you may bring to bear onto ’em, or catnip.
Wall, I wuz a beginnin’ to look bad, and so wuz Josiah, although Josiah, though I am fur from approvin’ of his course, yet it is the truth that he seemed to find some relief in givin’ vent to his feelin’s out on one side, and blowin’ round and groanin’ out to the barn and in the woodhouse, more than I did, who took it calm, and considered it a dispensation from the first, and took it as such.
Wall, if you’ll believe it, right on the top of these sufferin’s come a letter from a relation of Josiah’s, a widowed man by the name of Peter Tweedle.
He wuz a distant relation of Josiah Allen—lived about two hundred miles away.
He writ that he wuz lonesome—he had lost his companion for the third time, and it wore on him. He felt that the country air would do him good. (We found out afterwards that he had rented his house sence his bereavement and had lived in a boarding-house, and had been warned out by the crazed landlady and the infuriated boarders, owing to reasons which will appear hereafter, and had to move on).
Wall, he wanted to come and visit round to our house first, and then to the other relations.
And I sez to myself, it is one of ’em on his side, and not one word will I say agin the idee, not if I fall down in my tracks.
And Josiah was so kinder beat out with Melinda, and depressted and wore out by havin’ to go round in his stockin’ feet so much and whisperin’, that he said, “That any change would be a agreeable one, and he should write for Peter to come.”
And I, buoyed up by my principle, never said a word agin the idee, only jest this:
“Think well on it, Josiah Allen, before you make the move.”