And what wuz rooted up and washed away by them tears I don’t know, and I don’t s’pose anybody duz. Whether vanity, and a mistaken ambition, and the poor empty successes of a fashionable life wuz uprooted and floated away on the awakened, sweepin’ tide of a mother’s love and remorse; whether the dog floated down that stream, and low necked dresses, and high hazardus slippers, and strings for waists and corsets, and fashion, and folly, and rivalry, and waltzin’, and glitter, and buttons, and show; whether they all went down that stream, swept along like bubbles on a heavin’ tumultuous tide, I don’t know, nor I don’t s’pose anybody duz.
But any way, from that day on Miss Flamm has been a different woman. I stayed with her all that night and the next day, she a not leavin’ the child’s bed for a minute, and we a not gettin’ of her to, much as we tried to; eatin’ whatever we could make her eat right there by the bedside. And on the 2d day the doctor see a change in the child and she began to roust a little out of that stuper, and in a week’s time, she wuz a beginnin’ to get well.
We stayed on till she wuz out of danger and then we went home. But I see that she wuz to be trusted with her children after that. She dismissed that nurse, got a good motherly one, who she said would help her take care of the children for the future; only help her, for she should have the oversight of ’em herself, always.
The hired girl told me (Miss Flamm never mentioned it to me), and she wuz glad enough of it, that the dog wuz dead. It died the day the little girl wuz hurt. The hired girl said the doctor had told Miss Flamm, that it couldn’t live long. But it wuzn’t till we wuz on our way home that I found out one of the last eppisodes in that dog’s life. You see, sick as that dog wuz, it wuz bound to bark at my pardner as long as it had a breath left in its body. And Josiah told me in confidence (and it must be kep’, it is right that it should be); he said jest after he had knelt down and began to pray he felt that dog climb up onto his heels, and pull at his coat tails, and growl a low mad growl, and naw at ’em.
He tried to nestle round and get it off quietly but no, there it stood right onto Josiah Allen’s heels, and hung on, and tugged at them coat-tails, and growled at ’em that low deep growl, and shook ’em, as if determined to worry ’em off. And there my companion wuz. He couldn’t show his feelin’s in his face; he had got to keep his face all right towards Miss Flamm. And his feelin’s was rousted up about her, and he wuz a wantin’, and knew he wuz expected, to have his words and manner soothin’ and comfortin’, and that dog a standin’ on his heels and tearin’ off his coat-tails.
What to do he didn’t know. He couldn’t stop his prayer on such a time as this and kill a dog, though he owned up to me that he felt like it, and he couldn’t keep still and feel his coat-tails tore off of him, and be growled at, and shook, and pawed at all day. So he said after the dog had gin a most powerful tug, almost a partin’ the skirts asunder from his coat, he drew up one foot carefully (still a keepin’ his face straight and the prayer agoin’) and brung it back sudden and voyalent, and he heard the dog strike aginst the opposite side of the room with one short, sharp yelp, and then silence rained down and he finished the prayer.
But he said, and owned it up to me, that it didn’t seem to him so much like a religious exercise, as he could wish. It didn’t seem to help his spiritual growth much, if any.
And I sez, “I should think as much,” and I sez, “You wuz in a hard place, Josiah Allen.”
And he sez, “It wuz the dumbest hard place any one wuz ever in on earth.”