Josiah wuz in a hurry to git home, but I persuaded him to stop for a day at Dr. Phillip Rhode’s, who married she that wuz Dora Peak, daughter of my cousin on my own side.
I think everything of Dora and she of me, visey versey, for, if I say it that shouldn’t, I helped her more’n considerable to her present state of health, happiness, and common sense, and I spoze mebby you’d like to know about it. It’s quite a long story, but I can tell it if it’s best. It wuz about a year ago that Albina Peak, Dora’s mother, come to Jonesville on a errent, a important one.
I wuz standin’ before the winder washin’ my dishes and lookin’ out on the great waves of pink and green that wuz spread out in front of me (the orchard wuz in full bloom and promisin’ a grand fruit year), and I seemed to sort o’ float away on them waves into the past, layin’ firm holt of the present, too, and my clean linen dish-cloth, as folks can in their most romantick moods, if they’ve got any gumption—when all of a sudden Albina Ann Peak arrived. We hadn’t seen each other much of late years, for she lived in the city, but she wuz a third cousin of mine, and we used to go to school together up in the old Rizley schoolhouse, and she sort o’ leaned on me for strength and help in long division. She wuz dretful romantick and dreamy in them days, and devoured pickles and poetry enormously. But she sot store by me, and in the time of trouble I spoze she thought on me and kinder wanted to lean agin, her husband, who wuz a man of common sense and some property, havin’ passed away some years before.
Albina Ann said that the doctor said her daughter, Dora, couldn’t possibly live only a few months unless she got help, and it wuz a mysterious inward disorder she had, though the doctor had named it a strange, strange name that seemed to scare Albina Ann most to death, she couldn’t remember what it wuz, she said it sounded some like Constantinople-Andronopolis, but wuzn’t that, but wuz worse and more skairful, but I told her I shouldn’t let any doctor’s names skair me, they didn’t make nothin’ of usin’ names that wuz fearful. Then she told me that with all this sickness wuz love-sickness added, and for a poor dissipated chap, but good lookin’ and fascinating, and I said:
“This is worse than Constantinople-Andronopolis enough sight.”
And Albina sez, “That hain’t the name, but sounds like it.”
And I sez, “Well, it is worse than anything that sounds like anything.”
And she sez, “Well, I want to have it broke up, it has got to be broke up.” And she resoomed, “I’ve got to go and see my son Henry’s wife, who is dyin’ with fever at Denver, with twins added to it, and he sick abed, too.” And she sez, “It seems as if my troubles all fall on me to once. Both my children liable to die off at any time, and my daughter-in-law and the twins, too.”
And I looked sympathizin’ on her and sez jest for all the world as I used to at school, “I wish I could help you out, Albina Ann.”