If Bial Flamburg had been with her, he wouldn’t have gone a nigh the buggy, but he see it was a old man, and he rushed out. Ardelia couldn’t walk a step on her feet (owin’ to bein shaken up, in bones and feelin’s), and Abram jest took her in his strong lovin’ arms and carried her into the house, and she sort a clung round his neck, and seemed tickled enough to see him,
But she wuz dretful shook up and agitated, and it wuzn’t till way along in the night some time, that she wuz able to write a poem called, “a lay on a wheelbarrow; or, the fallen one.”
Which I thought when I read it, wuz a good name for it, for truly she had fell, and truly she had lay on it. Howsumever, Ardelia wrote that jest because it wuz second nater to write poetry on every identical thing she ever see or did.
She wuz glad enough to get rid of Bial Flamburg, and glad enough to go back to her old love. Abram wuz too manly and tender to say a word to Ardelia that night on the subject nearest to his heart. No, he see she needed rest. But the next day, when they wuz alone together, I s’pose he put the case all before her. All his warm burnin’ love for her, all his jealousy, and his wretchedness while she wuz a waverin’ between Banks and Bread, how his heart had been checked by the thought that Bial would vault over him, and in the end hold him at a discount.
Why, I s’pose he talked powerful and melted Ardelia’s soft little heart till it wuz like the softest kind of dough in his hands. And then he went on tenderly to say, how he needed her, and how she could mould him to her will. I s’pose he talked well, and eloquent, I s’pose so. Anyhow she accepted him right there in full faith and a pink and white cambric dress.
And they came over and told me about it in the afternoon P. M. And I felt well and happy in my mind, and wished ’em joy with a full heart and a willin’ mind.
They are both good creeters. And she bein’ so soft, and he so kinder hardy and stout-hearted, I believe they will get along firstrate. And when she once let her mind and heart free to think on him, she worships him so openly and unreservedly (though soft), that I don’t, believe there is a happier man in the hull country.
Wall, I lay out to give’em a handsome present when they be married, which will be in the fall. Mother Gee (who has got as well as can be expected) is goin’ to live with Susan. And I’m glad on’t. Mother Gee is a good old female no doubt, but it is resky work to take a new husband to live with, and when you take a mother-in-law too it adds to the resk.
But she is goin’ to live with Susan; it is her prefference.
And Abram has done so well, that he has bought another five acres onto his place, and is a goin’ to fix his house all over splendid before the weddin’ day. And Ardelia is to go right from the altar to her home—it is her own wishes.