Josiah and I went to the depot with ’em, and on our way home Nater didn’t look very gay and festive to us neither, though she wuz dressed up in pretty bright colors—no, indeed!
Her gorgeous robes looked very misty and droopin’ to me. I didn’t weep, I wouldn’t be so simple as that. The tears sort o’ run down my face some, but I wouldn’t weep—I wouldn’t be so foolish when I knew that they wuz comin’ home in the spring, God willin’.
But the kisses they had all left on my face seemed to kinder draw me after ’em. And I felt that quite a number of things might happen between that time and the time when Nater and I would dress up agin to meet ’em—she in her pale green mantilly, and I in my good old London brown, and we would both sally out to welcome ’em home.
But I didn’t say much, I jest kep’ calm and demute on the outside, and got my pardner jest as good a dinner as if my heart wuzn’t a achin’.
I felt that I had to be serene anyway, for Josiah Allen was fearfully onstrung, and I knew that my influence (and vittles) wuz about the only things that could string him up agin.
So I biled my potatoes and briled my steak with a almost marble brow, and got a good, a extra good dinner for him as I say, and the vittles seemed to comfort him considerable.
Wall, time rolled along, as it has a way of doin’.
Good land! no skein of yarn, no matter how smooth it is, and no matter how neat the swifts run, nor how fast the winder is—nuthin’ of that kind can compare with the skein of life hung onto the swifts of time—how fast they run, how the threads fly, how impossible it is to stop ’em or make ’em go slower, or faster, or anything!
They jest turn, and turn, and turn, and the day’s reel offen the swifts, and the months and the years.
Why, if you jest stopped still in your tracks and meditated on it, it would be enough to make you half crazy with the idee—of that noiseless skein of life that Somebody somewhere is a windin’—Somebody a settin’ back in the shadows out of sight, a payin’ no attention to you if you try to find out who it is, and why he is a windin’, and how long he calculates to keep the skein a goin’, and what the yarn is a goin’ to be used for anyway, and why, and how, and what.