I see she grew more meller-lookin’ and brightened up, and she sez:
“I used to be a good player.”
And if you’ll believe it—I don’t spoze you will, for Josiah wouldn’t when I told him that night—
But when Josiah Allen came home that night they wuz a playin’ together like a pair of turkle doves, she a playin’ the organ, and he a settin’ by her a tootin’, both as happy as kings.
And from that time out she never got skairt agin when he bust out sudden in song or begun gradual. And her fits grew lighter and lighter and fur seldomer.
And though our sufferin’s wuz heavy and severe to hear that organ and clarinet, or base viol, or pickelo, or brass horn a goin’ day and night, yet I seemed to see what wuz a comin’ on’t, and I held Josiah by main force to stand still and let providential circumstances have a straight path to move on in.
Wall, after two weeks of sufferin’ on our part almost onexampled in history, ancient or modern, the end come.
Peter Tweedle took Josiah out one side and told him, as bein’ the only male relation Melinda Ann had handy to get at, “that he had it in his mind to marry her quietly and take her at once to his home in the city,” and he asked Josiah “if he had any objections.”
And Josiah told me that he spoke out fervently and earnestly, and sez, “No! Heaven knows I hain’t.”
And he urged Peter warm to have the weddin’ sudden and to once, that very day and hour, and offered to get the minister there inside of twenty minutes.