Well, to resoom backwards a spell. Dr. Phillip come in with my pardner, and when Albina Ann see that splendid, noble lookin’ young man, and comprehended how and what it wuz, and that Le Flam wuz only a dark shadder in the past and wouldn’t shade Dora’s future agin, agin she sez to me in them solemn axents out on the back stoop, “Another mericle, Samantha?”
And I sez, “No such thing, Albina Ann; nothing only another triumph of common sense. Do you remember what I said to you about surroundin’ young girls with good society?” And I felt so well that I went on and eppisoded a little right there.
Sez I, “When you let a cat into a cream-dairy what do you expect, or a dog into a bone factory? Will the cat pay any attention to the catechism, or the dog to the doxology? No; you can’t expect them to change their naters all of a sudden. So with young folks: throw young hearts together in the springtime with no warnin’; what is the result? Why, the trees and flowers and everything bloom out under the sun of spring, and young hearts stand ready to blossom out under the sun of love, and you ort to be careful, careful as to the material you surround ’em with.”
But I see she wuzn’t payin’ the attention she ort to, and agin I see her look at Dr. Phillip proudly and happily, and she murmured agin, “It is a mericle, a mericle!”
And I sez agin, bein’ brung down from the mount of eloquence on to the plain of common sense, “It hain’t no such thing: it is nothin’ but siftin’ good wheat from bad and usin’ a little plain horse sense.”
Well, Albina Ann wuz always contrary; she’s never gin in, nor I nuther. She always to this day contends that it wuz a mericle, and sez she gives Providence all the praise for the hull performance, which of course I want her to do, and still——
Well, if I hadn’t acted out what I believed wuz the will of Providence she would have come out pretty slim.
Dora and Dr. Phillip wuz married ’long the next winter, and I went to the weddin’, proud as a peacock of the bright, healthy, happy looks of the bride—sweet as a rose, too, she looked under her white veil. And they have settled down in Loontown, in a pretty cream-colored cottage nigh the old doctor’s. And everybody sez they are the very happiest couple in Loontown.
She knows enough! And he jest worships her, and she him, and they both set store by me, sights of store.