“‘Oh my!’ said she. ‘Well, I never in all my born days! Oh, Sam, is that the way to talk of the dead!’
“‘In the dusk of the evening,’ sais I, ‘a carriage, they said, drove to the door, and a coffin was carried up-stairs; but the undertaker said it wouldn’t fit, and it was taken back again for a larger one. Just afore I went to bed, I went to the room to have another look at her, and she was gone, and there was a letter on the table for me; it contained a few words only.—‘Dear Sam, my first husband is come to life, and so have I. Goodbye, love.”
“‘Well, what did you do?’
“‘Gave it out,’ said I, ‘she died of the cholera, and had to be buried quick and private, and no one never knew to the contrary.’
“‘Didn’t it almost break your heart, Sammy?’
“‘No,’ sais I. ‘In her hurry, she took my dressing-case instead of her own, in which was all her own jewels, besides those I gave her, and all our ready money. So I tried to resign myself to my loss, for it might have been worse, you know,’ and I looked as good as pie.
“‘Well, if that don’t beat all, I declare!’ said she.
“‘Liddy,’ sais I, with a mock solemcoly air, ‘every bane has its antidote, and every misfortin its peculiar consolation.’
“‘Oh, Sam, that showed the want of a high moral intellectual education, didn’t it?’ said she. ‘And yet you had the courage to marry again?’
“‘Well, I married,’ sais I, ‘next year in France a lady who had refused one of Louis Philip’s sons. Oh, what a splendid gall she was, Liddy! she was the star of Paris. Poor thing! I lost her in six weeks.’