But she is a disagreeable creeter, and no mistake. She is one of them that can't find one solitary thing or one solitary person in this wide world to suit 'em. If the weather is cold she is pinin' for hot weather, and if the weather is hot she is pantin' for zero. [Illustration: “BUT SHE IS A DISAGREEABLE CREETER.”] If it is a pleasant day the sun hurts her eyes, and if it is cloudy she groans aloud and says “she can't see.” And no human bein' wuz ever known to suit her. She gets up early in the mornin' and puts on her specs, and goes out (as it were) a-huntin' up faults in folks. And she finds 'em, finds lots of 'em. And then she spends the rest of the day a-drivin' 'em ahead of her, and groanin' at 'em. You know this world bein' such a big place and so many different sort o' things in it that you can generally find in it the perticuler sort of game you set out to hunt in the mornin'. If you set out to hunt beauty and goodness, if you take good aim and are perseverin'--if you jest track 'em and foller 'em stiddy from mornin' till night, and don't get led away a-follerin' up some other game, such as meanness and selfishness and other such worthless head o' cattle--why, at night you will come in with a sight of good game. You will be a noble and happy hunter. [Illustration: “BUT FIT WITH THEIR TONGUES, FEARFUL.”] At the same time, if you hunt all day for faults you will come in at night with sights of pelts. You will find what you hunt for, track 'em right along and chase 'em down. Wall, Lodema never got led away from her perticuler chase. She just hunted faults from mornin' till night, and done well at it. She brought in sights of skins. But oh! wuzn't it disagreeable in the extreme to Samantha, who had always tried to bend her bow and bring down Beauty, to have her familiar huntin' grounds turned into so different a warpath. It wuz disagreeable! It wuz! It wuz! And then, havin' to stand between her and Josiah too, wuz fearful wearin' on me. I had always stood there in the past, and now in this visit it wuz jest the same; all the hull time, till about the middle of the fifth week, I had to stand between their two tongues--they didn't fight with their hands, but fit with their tongues, fearful. CHAPTER VII. But along about the middle of the fifth week I see a change. Lodema had been uncommon exasperatin', and I expected she would set Josiah to goin', and I groaned in spirit, to think what a job wuz ahead of me, to part their two tongues--when all of a sudden I see a curius change come over my pardner's face. I remember jest the date that the change in his mean wuz visible, and made known to me--for it wuz the very mornin' that we got the invitation to old Mr. and Miss Pressley's silver weddin'. And that wuz the fifteenth day of the month along about the middle of the forenoon. And it wuz not half an hour after Elnathen Pressley came to the door and give us the invitations, that I see the change in his mean.