“Why not?” sez the man.
Josiah Allen looked all around the room, and down on the grass, as if trying to find a good reasonable excuse a layin’ round loose somewhere, so’s he could get holt of it.
“You’d better go,” sez I, “I love to see you happy, Josiah Allen.”
“Yes, you’d better go,” sez the man.
“No!” sez Josiah, still a lookin’ round for a excuse, up into the heavens and onto the horizon. And at last his face kinder brightenin’ up, as if he had found one: “No, it looks so kinder cloudy, I guess I won’t go. I think we shall have rain between now and night.” And so we said no more on the subject and sot out homewards.
Ardelia wrote a poem on the occasion, wrote it right there, with rapidity and a lead pencil, and handed it to me, before I left the room. I put it into my pocket and didn’t think on it, for some days afterwards.
That night after we got home from the Roller Coaster, I felt dretful sort a down hearted about Abram Gee, I see in that little incident of the day, that Bial, although I couldn’t like him, yet I see he had his good qualities, I see how truthful he wuz. And although I love truth—I fairly worship it—yet I felt that if things wuz as he said they wuz, he would more’n probable get Ardelia Tutt, for I know the power of Ambition in her, and I felt that she would risk the chances of happiness, for the name of bein’ a Banker’s Bride.
So I sat there in deep gloom, and a chocolate colored wrapper, till as late as half past nine o’clock P. M. And I felt that the course of Abram’s love wuz not runnin’ smooth. No, I felt that it wuz runnin’ in a dwindlin’ torrent over a rocky bed, and a precipitus one. And I felt that if he wuz with me then and there, if we didn’t mingle our tears together we could our sithes, for I sithed, powerful and frequent.
Poor short-sighted creeter that I wuz, a settin’ in the shadow, when the sun wuz jest a gettin’ ready to shine out onto Abram and reflect off onto my envious heart. Even at that very time the hand of righteous Retribution had slipped its sure noose over Bial Flamburg’s neck, and wuz a walkin’ him away from Ardelia, away from happiness (oritory).
At that very hour, half past nine P. M., Ardelia Tutt and Abram Gee had met agin, and rosy love and happiness wuz even then a stringin’ roses on the chain that wuz to bind ’em together forever.