“Well,” sez I, “I will see about that;” and I got up and went to the back door and called out loud: “Josiah, I want you and Ury to come right here!”
Well, my conscience has twitted me about that performance more’n a hundred times sence, if it has once. But, then, I would kinder argy back, when I would git all wore out with that conscience a-proddin’ me, I did want Josiah to come that very minute, and I would have liked to see Ury step in, there hain’t a doubt on’t. And what of it, what if Ury wuz to Three Mile Bay for a load of spruce; and what if Josiah Allen wuz two milds and a half away in our wood-lot, I wanted ’em, there hain’t a doubt of that, and I didn’t lie.
And I spoze I might jest as well tell it right here as anywhere, Josiah has told it more than twenty times in one day by the clock: he sez, and I believe it implicitly, he had jest driv into the woods and had commenced to load the wood in when he sez he hearn me say: “Josiah, I want you.” And he sez there wuz in my voice a certain ring of urgent need and anxiety that made him turn the team right round and come home on the gallop, and consequently he met Le Flam down by the big butnut tree. For after I called to them men, for all the world jest as if they wuz inside the barn door, Le Flam turned on to his heel and went off without biddin’ me “good-by,” or “good-day,” or anythin’. He yanked the lines offen the post (he had hitched by the lines—didn’t know any more—and I spoze he broke sunthin’, somehow, for he seemed to be foolin’ round with the harness for quite a spell; I spoze his hands wuz clumsy and helpless owin’ to his state), and so, as I say, Josiah come a-gallopin’ ’long, and past him down by the butnut tree.
Well, to me that little eppisode always went to show how close the ties be unitin’ two true hearts, and how queer and curious the atmosphere is that surrounds ’em. My voice in need reached the ear that Love had attuned to hear it. Strange, strange is the mysteries of pardners. I’ve always said it and I always will: strange is the pathway on which their sperits can go back and forth and meet each other. It made me feel queer and riz up.
But Josiah looks at it different; he thinks that it wuz my nateral voice that he hearn, and sez he: “Samantha, I always told you that I could hear you two or three milds away, and now I’ve proved it: your voice is shrill,” sez he, “and you don’t realize how loud you holler.”
“Why didn’t Ury hear me?” sez I scornfully.
“Oh, there is a limit to the shrillest voice. You couldn’t expect to talk back and forth with folks clear to the Klondyke.”
Well, there wuzn’t no use argyin’, and he has throwed that eppisode in my face ever sence, and I spoze he always will.
But good land, I don’t care; I know that we got rid of Le Flam for good and all, for he didn’t make much of any move after that eppisode of advice and warnin’ to him. I guess he did write to Dora once or twice, but she never noticed his letters, and it wuzn’t but a few months before he married a rich widder.