So, sure enough, off I started, unbeknowin’ to anybody, and rode rite over to the plantation, (you know ours is rite jinin’ the widder Stallinses.) Well, when I got thar, I felt a little sort of sheepish; but I soon got over that, when Miss Carline said, (but she didn’t mean me to hear her)— “There Pinny, (that’s Miss Mary’s nick-name, you know,) there’s your bo come.” Miss Mary looked mighty sort o’ redish when I shuck her hand and told her howdy; and she made a sort of a stoop over and a dodge back, like the little gals does to the school-marm, and said: “Good evenin’, Mr. Jones,” (she used to always call me jest Joe.) “Take a chair, Joseph,” said Miss Carline; and we sot down in the parlor, and I begun talkin’ to Miss Mary ’bout Macon, and the long ride she had, and the bad roads, and the monstrous hot weather, and the like. She didn’t say much, but was in a mighty good humor and laughed a heap. I told her, I never seed sich a change in anybody. Nor I never did. Why she didn’t look like the same gal—good gracious! she looked so nice and trim, with her hair all komed down long side of her face, so slick and shiny as a mahogany burow. When she laughed she didn’t open her mouth like she used to; and she set up strait and still in her chair, and looked so different, but so monstrous pretty! I ax’d her a heap of questions, ’bout how she liked Macon, and the Female College, and so forth; and she told me a heap ’bout ’em. But old Miss Stallins and Miss Carline and Miss Kesiah, and all of ’em, kep all the time interruptin’ us, axin’ ’bout mother; if she was well, and if she was gwine to the Spring church next Sunday, and what luck she had with her crap, and all sich stuff, and I do believe I told the old women more’n twenty times that mother’s old turkey hen was settin’ on fourteen eggs. Well, I wasn’t to be backed out that-a-way—so I kept it a goin’ the best I could, ’til bimeby old Miss Stallins let her knittin’ fall three or four times, and then begun to nod and snap back like a fishin’-pole that was all the time gitin’ bites. I seed the galls lookin’ at one another, and pinchin’ one another’s elbows, and Miss Mary said, she wondered what time it was, and said the college disciplines, or somethin’ like that, didn’t ’low late hours. I seed how the game was gwine—but howsumever, I kep talkin’ to her like a cotton gin in packin’ time, as hard as I could clip it, ’til bimeby the old lady went to bed, and arter a bit the gals all cleared, and left Miss Mary to herself. That was jest the thing I wanted.