So I directed it Virginia, but I left off the Old, I would.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Well, Tamer and I had it all planned to go to Uncle Submit’s whilst Celestine wuz there with her little girl, but at the last minute a letter come from Tamer askin’ me if I wouldn’t come there and visit with Celestine, as she had concluded to invite her there instead of our goin’ to see her. There wuz some views, Tamer said, about their house that Celestine wanted to paint, and had jest as good as told her it would be more agreeable for us all to visit there than at Uncle Submit’s. “Pretty cool in Celestina,” sez Tamer.
She always put on the “teeny,” but, good land! I didn’t. I knew she wuz named Celestine after old Aunt Celestine Butterick. I wuzn’t goin’ to add or diminish from that good old creeter’s name, so I always called her Celestine.
Well, Tamer went on to say that, though it wuz pretty cool in Celestina, but jest like her for all the world, mebby it would be better for us to meet there, as Uncle Submit and Aunt Eunice wuz kinder childish and mebby so many visitors would upset ’em, and Celestina is all took up with her painting, and hain’t any housekeeper, and the hired girl is a real shiftless one. And sez Tamer, “Be sure you come prepared to stay a week, the children are jest cryin’ to have you come. Anna sez, ‘Tell Aunt Samantha she must stay a week anyway,’ and Jack has wrote you a letter which I enclose in this. Cicero would send a message, but he is dretful carried away with a new book he has borrowed, a splendid book, ‘The Serpent Enchantress; or, The Doomed Fly-Away,’ it is perfectly fascinating. I set up last night until four o’clock finishin’ it.”
I gin a deep sithe as I read this sentence. The letter closed with another urgent request for to come when she give me warnin’, she would write the day Celestina come, she said, and it ended
“Yours with devoted love,
“TAMER SMITH.”
I laid down her epistle and took up Jack’s, it wuz printed in big letters, and the page wuz as full of love and longin’ to see me as it wuz with smears and ink blots, and that is goin’ to the very extent of describin’ the love it contained. Bless his dear little warm heart! Well, I spozed I should have to go but thought I wouldn’t talk it over with Josiah till the day drawed near, not wantin’ to precipitate trouble onto him till it wuz necessary, and I knew well how wedded he wuz to my presence.