We kep it in a little warm shed offen the wood house for quite a spell, but still I used to find it considerable cold when I would meander out there in a icy night to feed it. But jest as it is always the way with wimmen, the more care I took on it, the more it needed me and depended on me, the better I liked it. Till I got to likin' it so well that it wuzn't half so hard a job for me to go out to feed it in the night as it would have been to laid still in my warm bed and think mebby it wuz cold and hungry. So I would pike out and feed it two or three times a night. That is the nater of wimmen, the weaker it wuz and the humblier it wuz, and the more it needed me, the more I thought on it. And as is the nater of man, Josiah Allen didn't seem to care so much about it while it wuz weak and humbly and spindlin'. He told me time and agin, that I couldn't save it, and it never would amount to anythin', and wuzn't nothin' but legs any way, and lots of other slightin' remarks. And he'd call it "horse corset" in a kind of a light, triflin' way, that wuz apt to gaul a woman when she come back with icy night-gown and frosty toes and fingers, way along in the night. [Illustration: "BEEN OUT TO TEND TO YOUR 'HORSE CORSET,' HAVE YOU?"] He'd wake up, a-layin' there warm and comfortable on his soft goose feather piller and say to me: "Been out to tend to your 'horse corset,' have you?" "_Horse corset_! 'Wall, what if it wuz?" Such language way along in the night, from a warm comfortable pardner to a cold one, is apt to make some words back and forth. And then he'd speak of its legs agin, in the most slightin' terms--and he'd ask me if didn't want its picter took--etc., etc., etc. (I believe one thing that ailed Josiah Allen wuz he didn't want me to get up and get my feet so cold). But, as I wuz a-sayin', though I couldn't deny some of his words, for truly its legs did seem to be at the least calculation a yard and a half long, specilly in the night, why they'd look fairly pokerish. And though I knew it wuz humbly still I persevered, and at last it got to thrivin' and growin' fast. And the likelier it grew, and the stronger, and the handsomer, so Josiah Allen's likin' for it grew and increased, till he got to settin' a sight of store by it. And now it wuz a two-year-old, and he had sold it for two hundred and fifteen dollars. It wuz spozed it wuz goin' to make a good trotter. Wall, seem' he had got such a big price for the colt, and knowin' well that I wuz the sole cause of its bein' alive at this day, I felt that it wuz the best time in the hull three hundred and sixty-five days of the year to tackle him for sunthin' to give to the fair. I felt that the least he could do would be to give me ten or fifteen dollars for it. So consequently after supper wuz out of the way, and the work done up, I tackled him.