I myself didn’t cry, though the tears run down my face some. But I thought I wouldn’t give way and cry.
And this, the follerin’, is the story, told short by me, and terse, terser than she told it, fur. For her sobs and tears and her anguished looks all punctuated it, and lengthened it out, and my little groans and sithes, which I groaned and sithed entirely onbeknown to myself.
But anyway it wuz a pitiful story.
She had at a early age fell in love voyalent with a young man, and he visey versey and the same. They wuz dretful in love with each other, as fur as I could make out, and both on ’em likely and well meanin’, and well behaved with one exception.
He drinked some. But she thought, as so many female wimmen do, that he would stop it when they wuz married.
Oh! that high rock that looms up in front of prospective brides, and on which they hit their heads and their hearts, and are so oft destroyed.
They imagine that the marriage ceremony is a-goin’ in some strange way to strike in and make over all the faults and vices of their young pardners and turn ’em into virtues.
Curous, curous, that they should think so, but they do, and I spoze they will keep on a-thinkin’ so. Mebby it is some of the visions that come in the first delerium of love, and they are kinder crazy like for a spell. But tenny rate they most always have this idee, specially if love, like the measles, breaks out in ’em hard, and they have it in the old-fashioned way.
Wall, as I wuz a-sayin’, and to resoom and proceed.
Annie thought he would stop drinkin’ after they wuz married. He said he would. And he did for quite a spell. And they wuz as happy as if they had rented a part of the Garden of Eden, and wuz a-workin’ it on shares.