Wall, of course when the doctor said this (Thomas Jefferson jest worships Maggie anyway) he thought at once of that old plantation of hisen, for he had made the bargain and took the place, a calculatin’ to sell it agin or rent it out. And the upshot of the matter wuz that along the last of October, when Nater seemed all rigged out in her holiday colors of red and orange to bid ’em good-bye, our son Thomas Jefferson and Maggie, and little Snow, and the baby boy that had come to ’em a few months before, all set sail for Belle Fanchon, their plantation in Georgia. Yes, the old girl (Nater) seemed to be a standin’ up on every hill-top a wavin’ her gorgeous bandana handkerchief to ’em in good-bye; and her blue gauze veil that floated from her forwerd looked some as if it had tears on it, it looked sort o’ dim like and hazy. Josiah and I went to the depot with ’em, and on our way home Nater didn’t look very gay and festive to us neither, though she wuz dressed up in pretty bright colors—no, indeed! Her gorgeous robes looked very misty and droopin’ to me. I didn’t weep, I wouldn’t be so simple as that. The tears sort o’ run down my face some, but I wouldn’t weep—I wouldn’t be so foolish when I knew that they wuz comin’ home in the spring, God willin’. But the kisses they had all left on my face seemed to kinder draw me after ’em. And I felt that quite a number of things might happen between that time and the time when Nater and I would dress up agin to meet ’em—she in her pale green mantilly, and I in my good old London brown, and we would both sally out to welcome ’em home. But I didn’t say much, I jest kep’ calm and demute on the outside, and got my pardner jest as good a dinner as if my heart wuzn’t a achin’. I felt that I _had_ to be serene anyway, for Josiah Allen was fearfully onstrung, and I knew that my influence (and vittles) wuz about the only things that could string him up agin. So I biled my potatoes and briled my steak with a almost marble brow, and got a good, a extra good dinner for him as I say, and the vittles seemed to comfort him considerable. Wall, time rolled along, as it has a way of doin’. Good land! no skein of yarn, no matter how smooth it is, and no matter how neat the swifts run, nor how fast the winder is—nuthin’ of that kind can compare with the skein of life hung onto the swifts of time—how fast they run, how the threads fly, how impossible it is to stop ’em or make ’em go slower, or faster, or anything! They jest turn, and turn, and turn, and the day’s reel offen the swifts, and the months and the years.