But she don’t mention brother Timothy only when Josiah asks her about him. But Doodle! I can truly say without lyin’ that if ever a human bein’ got sick of any thing on earth, I got sick of Doodle, sick enough of him. Bein’ shet up in the house with her I sense it more than Josiah does. It is Doodle in the morning, and Doodle at noon, and Doodle at night, and Doodle between meals; and if she talks in her sleep—which she is quite a case to—it is about Doodle. I don’t complain to Josiah much, knowin’ it will only make his road the harder; but I told Thomas Jefferson one day, after she had jest finished a story about her and Doodle that took her the biggest part of the forenoon, for the particulars that she will put in about nothin’, is enough to make any body sweat in the middle of winter. She had went and lay down in her room after she got through; and good land! I should think she would want to—I should think she would have felt tuckered out. And I says to Thomas Jefferson—and I sithed as I said it: “It does seem as if Doodle will be the death of me.” And I sithed again several times. “Wall,” says he, “if he should, I will write a handsome piece of poetry on it;” says he, “Alf Tennyson and Shakespeare have written some pretty fair pieces, but mine shall “Beat the hull caboodle, And the burden of the him shall be, That mother died of Doodle.” I stopped sithin’ then, and I says to him in real severe tones, “You needn’t laugh Thomas J., I’d love to see _you_ try it one day.” Says I, “You and your father bein’ outdoors all day, when you come in for a few minutes to your meals, her stiddy stream of talk is as good as a circus to you, sunthin’ on the plan of a side show. But you be shet up with it all day long, day after day, and week after week, and then see how you would feel in your mind; then see how the name of Doodle would sound in your ear.” But I try to do the best I can with her. As I said, how long she will stay with us I don’t know. But I don’t s’pose there is any hopes of her marryin’ again. When she first came to live with us, I did think—to tell the plain truth—that she would marry again if she got a chance. I thought I see symptoms of it. But it wasn’t but a few days after that that I give up the hope, for she told me that it wasn’t no ways likely that she should ever marry again. She talks a sight about Doodle’s face, always calls it his ‘linement’, says it is printed on her heart, and it haint no ways likely that she will ever see another linement, that will look to her as good as Mr. Doodle’s linement.