But when Josiah Allen came home that night they wuz a playin’ together like a pair of turkle doves, she a playin’ the organ, and he a settin’ by her a tootin’, both as happy as kings. And from that time out she never got skairt agin when he bust out sudden in song or begun gradual. And her fits grew lighter and lighter and fur seldomer. And though our sufferin’s wuz heavy and severe to hear that organ and clarinet, or base viol, or pickelo, or brass horn a goin’ day and night, yet I seemed to see what wuz a comin’ on’t, and I held Josiah by main force to stand still and let providential circumstances have a straight path to move on in. Wall, after two weeks of sufferin’ on our part almost onexampled in history, ancient or modern, the end come. Peter Tweedle took Josiah out one side and told him, as bein’ the only male relation Melinda Ann had handy to get at, “that he had it in his mind to marry her quietly and take her at once to his home in the city,” and he asked Josiah “if he had any objections.” And Josiah told me that he spoke out fervently and earnestly, and sez, “No! Heaven knows I hain’t.” And he urged Peter warm to have the weddin’ sudden and to once, that very day and hour, and offered to get the minister there inside of twenty minutes. But I wuz bound to have things carried on decent. So I sot the day most a week off, and I sent for Aunt Melinda and his children that wuz married, and the single one, and we had a quiet little weddin’, or it would have been, only the last thing that they done in the house before they left wuz to get the hull crew on ’em to bust out in a weddin’ song loud enough almost to raise the ruff. Wall, Peter writ to Josiah that he hadn’t been lonesome sence it took place, not a minute. And Melinda Ann writ to me that she hadn’t had a fit sence, nor a spazzum. So, as I told Josiah Allen, our sufferin’s brung about good to two lonesome and onhappy and fitty creeters, and we ort to be thankful when we look back on our troubles and afflictions with ’em. And he looked at me enough to take my head off, if a look could guletine, and sez he: “Thankful! Oh, my gracious Heaven! hear her! Thankful!” And his tone wuz such that I hain’t dasted to bring up the subject sence. No, I don’t dast to, but I do inside of me feel paid for all I went through. [Illustration: PETER AND MELINDA ANN. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV. WALL, it wuzn’t more than a few days after the marriage and departure of Peter and Melinda Ann, when I got a letter from Cousin John Richard—he wuz then in South Carolina, hard at work agin, literally follerin’ the example of Him who went about doin’ good. The letter wuz writ in pure friendship, and then he wanted to find out the ingredients of that spignut syrup I had give him when he wuz at Jonesville, his throat wuz a botherin’ him agin, and he said that had helped him.