So I bein’ agreeable to the idee, we set out after dinner, a-layin’ out to be gone two nights and one hull day, and two parts of days, a-goin’ and a-comin’ back. Wall, we got there onexpected, as they had come onto us. And we found ’em plunged into trouble. Their only child, a girl, who had married a young lawyer of Loontown, had jest lost her husband with the typus, and they wuz a-makin’ preparations for the funeral when we got there. She and her husband had come home on a visit, and he wuz took down bed-sick there and died. I told ’em I felt like death to think I had descended down onto ’em at such a time. But Abel said he wuz jest despatchin’ a messenger for us when we arrove, for, he said, “in a time of trouble, then wuz the time, if ever, that a man wanted his near relations clost to him.” And he said “we had took a load offen him by appearin’ jest as we did, for there would have been some delay in gettin’ us there, if the messenger had been despatched.” He said “that mornin’ he had felt so bad that he wanted to die,—it seemed as if there wuzn’t nothin’ left for him to live for; but now he felt that he had sunthin’ to live for, now his relatives wuz gethered round him.” Josiah shed tears to hear Abel go on. I myself didn’t weep none, but I wuz glad if we could be any comfort to ’em, and told ’em so. And I told Sally Ann, that wuz Abel’ses wife, that I would do anything that I could to help ’em. And she said “everything wuz a-bein’ done that wuz necessary. She didn’t know of but one thing that wuz likely to be overlooked and neglected, and that wuz the crazy bedquilt.” She said “she would love to have that finished, to throw over a lounge in the settin’-room, that wuz frayed out on the edges. And if I felt like it, it _would_ be a great relief to her to have me take it right offen her hands, and finish it.” So I took out my thimble and needle (I always carry such necessaries with me, in a huzzy made expressly for that purpose), and I sot down and went to piecin’ up. There wuz seventeen blocks to piece up, each one crazy as a loon to look at, and it wuz all to set together. She had the pieces, for she had been off on a visitin’ tower the week before, and collected of ’em. So I sot in quiet and the big cheer in the settin’-room, and pieced up, and see the preparations a-goin’ on round us. I found that Abel’ses folks lived in a house big and showy-lookin’, but not so solid and firm as I had seen. It wuz one of the houses, outside and inside, where more pains had been took with the porticos and ornaments than with the underpinnin’.