Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/209

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An Old Friend Appears

"'There's some sense in that, madam,' says he, an' then he went into court ag'in.

"Jone never had no chance to jine in with the other fellers, for they couldn't agree, an' they were all discharged at last. So the whole thing went for nuthin'.

"When Jone came out he looked like he'd been drawn through a pump-log, an' he says to me, tired-like:

"'Has there been a frost?'

"'Yes,' says I, 'two of 'em.'

"'All right, then,' says he. 'I've had enough of bridal trips, with their dry falls, their lunertic asylums, an' their jury-boxes. Let's go home an' settle down. We needn't be afraid, now that there's been a frost.'"

"Oh, why will you live in such a dreadful place?" cried Euphemia. "You ought to go somewhere where you needn't be afraid of chills."

"That's jus' what I thought, ma'am," returned Pomona. "But Jone an' me got a disease-map of this country, an' we looked all over it careful, an' wherever there wasn't chills there was somethin' that seemed a good deal wuss to us. An', says Jone: 'If I'm to have anything the matter with me, give me somethin' I'm used to. It don't do for a man o' my time o' life to go changin' his diseases.'

"So home we went. An' there we is now. An' as this is the end of the bridal trip story, I'll go an' take a look at the cow an' the chickens an' the horse, if you don't mind."

Which we didn't—and we gladly went with her over the estate.

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