“'So I should think,' says he. 'He's been tryin' a trick on us, and
sendin' us to the wrong place. It's rather late in the season for a show
of the kind, but the place we ought to go to is a potato-field.'
“'What on earth are you talkin' about?' says I, dumbfoundered.
“'Well,' says he, 'it's a trick he's been playin'. He thought a bridal
trip like ours ought to have some sort of a outlandish wind-up, an' so
he sent us to this place, which is a meetin' of chaps who are agoin'
to talk about insec's,--principally potato-bugs, I expec'--an' anything
stupider than that, I s'pose your boarder-as-was couldn't think of,
without havin' a good deal o' time to consider.'
“'It's jus' like him,' says I. 'Let's turn round and go back,' which we
did, prompt.
“We gave the tickets to a little boy who was sellin' papers, but I don't
believe he went.
“'Now then,' says Jone, after he'd been thinkin' awhile, 'there'll be no
more foolin' on this trip. I've blocked out the whole of the rest of it,
an' we'll wind up a sight better than that boarder-as-was has any idea
of. To-morrow we'll go to father's an' if the old gentleman has got any
money on the crops, which I expec' he has, by this time, I'll take up
a part o' my share, an' we'll have a trip to Washington, an' see the
President, an' Congress, an' the White House, an' the lamp always
a-burnin' before the Supreme Court, an'--'
“'Don't say no more, says I, 'it's splendid!'
“So, early the nex' day, we goes off jus' as fast as trains would take
us to his father's, an' we hadn't been there mor'n ten minutes, before
Jone found out he had been summoned on a jury.
“'When must you go?' says I, when he come, lookin' a kind o' pale, to
tell me this.
“'Right off,' says he. 'The court meets this mornin'. If I don't hurry
up, I'll have some of 'em after me. But I wouldn't cry about it. I don't
believe the case'll last more'n a day.'
“The old man harnessed up an' took Jone to the court-house, an' I went
too, for I might as well keep up the idea of a bridal-trip as not. I
went up into the gallery, and Jone, he was set among the other men in
the jury-box.
“The case was about a man named Brown, who married the half-sister of a
man named Adams, who afterward married Brown's mother, and sold Brown
a house he had got from Brown's grandfather, in trade for half a
grist-mill, which the other half of was owned by Adams's half-sister's
first husband, who left all his property to a soup society, in trust,
till his son should come of age, which he never did, but left a will
which give his half of the mill to Brown, and the suit was between Brown
and Adams and Brown again, and Adams's half-sister, who was divorced
from Brown, and a man named Ramsey, who had put up a new over-shot wheel
to the grist-mill.”
“Oh my!” exclaimed Euphemia. “How could you remember all that?”
“I heard it so often, I couldn't help remembering it,” replied Pomona.
And she went on with her narrative.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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