She is likely, her morals mebby bein’ able to stand more bein’ so sort o’ withy and soft than if they wuz more hard and brittle, they could bend round considerable without breakin’.

And Miss Huff had also a little grand-niece, Dorothy Evans, whose mother had passed away, and Miss Huff bein’ next of kin had took into her family to take care of.  Dretful clever I thought it wuz of Miss Huff.  Dorothy’s mother, I guess, didn’t have much faculty and spent everything as she went along; she had an annuity that died with her, but she had been well enough off so she could hire a nurse for the child, an elderly colored woman, Aunt Tryphena by name, who out of love for the little one had offered to come to Miss Huff’s just to be near the little girl.

And Dotie, as they well called her, for everyone doted on her, wuz as sweet a little fairy as I ever see, her pretty golden head carried sunshine wherever it went.  And her big blue eyes, full of mischief sometimes, wuz also full of the solemn sweetness of them “Who do always behold the face of the Father.”

I took to her from the very first, and so did Josiah and Blandina.  The hull family loved and petted her from Miss Huff and her old father down to Billy, who alternately petted and teased her.

To Aunt Tryphena she wuz an object of perfect adoration.  And Aunt Tryphena wuz a character uneek and standin’ alone.  When she wuz made the mould wuz throwed away and never used afterwards.  She follered Dorothy round like her shadow and helped make the beds and keep the rooms tidy, a sort of chamber-maid, or ruther chamber-woman, for she wuz sixty if she wuz a day.

Besides Aunt Tryphena Miss Huff had two more girls to cook and clean.  She had good help and sot a good table, and Aunt Feeny as they called her wuz a source of constant amusement and interest; but of her more anon.

We got to Miss Huff’s in the afternoon and rested the rest of that day and had a good night’s sleep.

In the mornin’ Josiah, who went out at my request before breakfast to buy a little peppermint essence, come in burnin’ with indignation, his morals are like iron (most of the time).

He said a man had been advisin’ him to take the Immoral Railway as the best way of seein’ the Fair grounds as a hull before we branched out to see things more minutely one by one.

“Immoral Railway!” he snorted out agin.

“I hope you didn’t fall in with any such idee, Josiah Allen.”  And I sithed as I thought how many took that kind of railway and wuz whirled into ruin on’t.

“Fall in with it!  I guess the man that spoke to me about it thought I didn’t fall in with it.  I gin that feller a piece of my mind.”

“I hope you didn’t give him too big a piece,” sez I anxiously; “you know you hain’t got a bit to spare, specially at this time.”

Oh, how I watched over that man day by day!  I wanted the peppermint more for him than for me.  I laid out if he seemed likely to break down to give him a peppermint sling.