“That’s jest what I’ve come for,” sez she; “I’ve got to go to Henry’s for a spell, anyway,” and would I for the sake of old times, to say nothin’ of the ties of third cousin, would I let her poor sick girl come down into the country and see if the country air and my care would recuperate her up a little mite, or if she couldn’t be helped, make the poor dear, dyin’ girl as comfortable as I could? She said money wuz no object to her. And I said it wuzn’t no object to me. And then she said she thought it wuz a mysterious Providential affliction to have her beautiful only daughter so delicate and liable to expire any minute, still she felt that it wuz tough on her, and she bespoke my sympathy, jest as she used to git help in her old Ruger and Olney’s gography. And she asked me pintedly if I didn’t think it wuz a strange, strange dispensation of Providence that when she wuz so abundantly able to care for her only daughter, so many poor girls wuz spared healthy and happy, and her only girl seemed about to be took, and sez she, “She wuz a healthy baby, weighed ten pounds at first, but,” she added, “she is so sweet and pure that probable the angels feel that they can’t do without her society much longer.”
And I sot up on the fence, mentally, as it were pretty straight, and didn’t say yea or nay, knowin’ that many things wuz laid on Providence He wuzn’t to blame for.
Well, I told Albina Ann, after thinkin’ it over and consultin’ Josiah out in the hoss barn, that she might send her girl down for a spell and I’d do the best I could for her. She seemed to be real relieved when I told her, and then bime-bye we got to talkin’ about Le Flam agin, for that wuz the name of the dissipated young chap she had mentioned, and I told her I approved of her stand, for if a man couldn’t reform durin’ the enchanted days of courtship what could you expect when married life and its disillusions should take place, late dinners, cleanin’ house, etcetery, etcetery, and inflamatory rumatiz, ulcerated teeth and colick?
But I sez to Albina Ann, “Why under the sun did you let him come to your house in the first place, if you knew what he wuz?”
And she said she always knew that he wuz a poor, miserable creature, but she felt that it would be breakin’ up the sweet, heavenly atmosphere of confidence that had always existed between her and her only daughter if she said anything against Le Flam to her.
“You hain’t spoke to her about him?” sez I, in wondering axents.
“No, Cousin Samantha; her heart seems to be so wropped up in him, and the cords that connect her soul to mine are so linked in with her girlish dreams, that I could not bear to ruffle ’em, the harmony between us has always been so heavenly.”
Sez I, “The harmony would be liable to be ruffled a little if you should see her abused by a dissipated brute, and she and her children snaked round by the hair of their heads and turned outdoors, etc.”
“Oh! oh!” sez she, puttin’ up her hands, “don’t pierce my soul with such agonizin’ thoughts!”
“Well,” sez I, coolin’ down a little, “the best way to escape such agony is to use common sense in the first place. Why under the sun didn’t you stop her going with him?”