Karen nobly stood by Jabez, who I must say stood by his job in that respect, but I guess they went out into the hall, I thought I ketched a glimpse of ’em, as I havin’ regained my faculty, run in.  We got in jest after the deluge poured out agin, higher, louder and more steaminer than ever, and when what few scraps of plaster remained on the settin’ room had fell victims to the bilin’ flood.  Well, we let the fire go down agin and cowered over the kitchen stove that day, and agin went shiverin’ to bed.  That night the weather moderated, and with a low fire in the furnace, and the heat from the kitchen stove, we kep’ middlin’ warm.  We cleaned up the plaster, mopped the floor and wuz comparitively comfortable for three days.  The fourth night the fire in the furnace riz up onbeknown to us in the night, and the first we knew we wuz waked up by what we thought a loud clap of thunder overhead, accompanied by a loud roar, and shakin’ of the walls, and Josiah started up in bed and sez, “Is the house struck, Samantha?  Who ever heard of thunder at this time of year?  Or is it a earthquake?”

But I gittin’ holt of my conscientiousness quicker than he did, sez, “Josiah Allen, it is that heatin’ apparatus.”  And to confirm my words we hearn the angry loud roar and the water splurgin’ out over our heads and drizzlin’ down through the laths in the next room.  Even as I spoke Rosy come down stairs in her pretty pink wrapper, and sez she half asleep, but wholly afraid, “Oh, Aunt Samantha, I do wish Royal was here! what a fearful time!” sez she.

And if you’ll believe it, so onselfish is a woman’s heart, even in the midst of her deepest tribulations, and so kinder sentimental, her words sent a faint ray of joy over my heart, some like the pale light of a star shinin’ out over a wild western tornado.  But before I could reply Ury come runnin’ down stairs holdin’ Philury, faithful critter that he wuz, and Josiah yelled at him:  “Do you go over to Kellup Wind’s and bring that cussed fool over here, and if he don’t take out that invention of his under ten minutes I will have the law on him, and whip him within an inch of his life!”

It wuz half-past three and we all got up, and I got breakfast by lamp light.  Ury come back and said Jabez had been studyin’ for the hull of the last three days and said he wuz absolutely sure now he knew what ailed it, it wuz the little piece of pipe that led to the tank, it wuz set in the wrong place, it would take about twenty minutes to fix it so it would be entirely right.  Josiah hollered out, “Be we goin’ to be used by that dum fool to try his experiments on?  Let him take it out or I will take it out and throw it at him!”

But Karen had writ a note to me, pleadin’ with me as a sister in the meetin’ house, to let Jabez have this sole chance, and I showed this note to Josiah and sez, “For Karen’s sake mebby we’d better let him try it.”

“For Karen’s sake!” he yelled out, “why should we pompey her?  It is all her fault.  What did she let him live for when he wuz a babe?  She is to the bottom of it, if it hadn’t been for her lettin’ him live we shouldn’t be in this state, up at midnight, hungry as bears, cold as frogs, and our house a wreck!”