But I am a eppisodin’ fearful, and to resoom.
As I say, to the outside observer it seemed queer, queer as a dog, that after all our talk on the subject (and it seemed as if Providence had jest been a preparin’ us for what wuz to come), that I myself, Josiah Allen’s wife, should go with my faithful pardner down South to stay for we knew not how long.
Wall, the way on’t wuz, our son Thomas Jefferson, who is doin’ a powerful big bizness, made a dicker with a man from the South for a big piece of land of hisen, a old plantation that used to be splendid and prosperous before the war, but wuz now run down. The name of the place—for as near as I can make out they have a practice of namin’ them old plantations—wuz Belle Fanchon, a sort of a French name, I wuz told.
Wall, Thomas J., in the way of bizness, had got in his hands a summer hotel at a fashionable resort, and this man wanted to trade with him. He hadn’t owned this plantation long—it had come into his hands on a mortgage.
Wall, Thomas Jefferson was offered good terms, and he made the trad.
And early in the fall Maggie, our son’s wife, got kinder run down (she had a young child), and comin’ from a sort of a consumptive family on her father’s side, the doctor ordered her to go South for the winter.
He said, in her state of health (she had been weak as a cat for months) he wouldn’t like to resk the cold of our Northern winter.
Wall, of course when the doctor said this (Thomas Jefferson jest worships Maggie anyway) he thought at once of that old plantation of hisen, for he had made the bargain and took the place, a calculatin’ to sell it agin or rent it out.
And the upshot of the matter wuz that along the last of October, when Nater seemed all rigged out in her holiday colors of red and orange to bid ’em good-bye, our son Thomas Jefferson and Maggie, and little Snow, and the baby boy that had come to ’em a few months before, all set sail for Belle Fanchon, their plantation in Georgia.
Yes, the old girl (Nater) seemed to be a standin’ up on every hill-top a wavin’ her gorgeous bandana handkerchief to ’em in good-bye; and her blue gauze veil that floated from her forwerd looked some as if it had tears on it, it looked sort o’ dim like and hazy.