“No I _haint_!” he snapped out enough to tear my night cap in to. “No I haint, nothin’ nor nobody, nor I wont be at this time of night.”
“I’d lay and swear if I was in _your_ place Josiah Allen,” says I almost coldly.
“Well! the idee of roustin’ anybody up in the dead of night, and callin’ on ’em for principle and things. But you wont git any principle out of me at this time of night, you’ll _see_ you wont,” he hollered.
He was almost a luny for the time bein’. I pitted him, and says I soothin’ly:
“Go to sleep Josiah, and we’ll talk it over in the mornin’.”
He dropped off to sleep, and I kep’ on a thinkin’ and a layin’ on my plans to marry Molly off till most mornin’. And I did it, I married off Molly about one o’clock and we started for the Sentinal in the neighborhood of two.
Jest how I mollyfied the old Deacon about Molly, and brought him to terms, I thought I wouldn’t tell to anybody but Josiah. Mebby there was hints throwed out to him that there was Horns that would be meddled with, and sot up ag’inst him. I guess I hadn’t better tell it, for I made up my mind that I wouldn’t say nothin’ about it to anybody but my Josiah. But I dressed Molly up that very afternoon,—she a blushin’ and a laughin’ and a cryin’ at the same time—in that very white dress, and married her myself (assisted by a Methodist minister) to Tom Pitkins.
And I have learned by a letter from Molly, and she sent me her new picture, (they have gone to housekeepin’ and are as happy as kings) that her father is married to Miss Horn. And all I have got to say is, that she needs a good horn disposition to git along with him. And he, unless I am mistaken, will wish before the year was up that he was a sleepin’ peacefully inside of his own Sername.
From the first minute I had give a thought to goin’ to see the Sentinal, my idee had been to git boarded up in a private house. And I had my eye (my mind’s eye) upon who was willin’ and glad to board us. The Editor of the Auger’ses wife’s sister’s husband’s cousin boarded folks for a livin’—she was a Dickey and married to a Lampheare. The Editor of the Auger’ses wife told me early in the spring, that if _she_ went, she should go through the Sentinal to her sisters’, and she happened to mention Miss Lampheare and the fact that she boarded up folks for a livin’. So when we decided to go, I told her when she wrote to her sister to ask her, to ask Miss Lampheare if she was willin’ to board Josiah and me, and how much she would ask for the boards. She wrote back; her terms was moderate and inside of our means, and my mind was at rest. I almost knew that Josiah would want to throw himself onto his relatives through the Sentinal, but the underpinnin’ was no firmer and rockier under our horse barn than the determination of her that was Samantha Smith, not to encamp upon a 2nd cousin. We had quite a lot of relations a livin’ out to Filadelfy—though we never seen ’em,—sort o’ distant, such as 2nd cousins, and so 4th, till they dwindled out of bein’ any relations at all; descendants of the Daggets and Kidds,—Grandmother Allen was a Kidd—no relation of old Captain Kidd. No! if any of his blood had been in my Josiah’s veins, I would have bled him myself if I had took a darnin’ needle to it. No! the Kidd’ses are likely folks as I have heerd—and Josiah was rampant to go to cousin Sam Kidds (a Captain in the late war), through the Sentinal. But again I says to him calmly but firmly: