Josiah told me he thought we could git round and see what wuz in this buildin’ in four weeks, but I felt dubersome about it and told him we would have to go a pretty good jog if we did.  Blandina thought she could git round in three weeks if she had some good man’s arm to lean on the most of the time.

But ‘tennyrate, after stayin’ there and lookin’ round a long time, I told Josiah I wuz tired enough to go home, so we went.

I wuz most melted too, for St. Louis weather is tuckering to them that can’t stand heat.  It made Josiah real worrisome time and agin.  And one thing he said about it put a idee into my head that I never had thought on, I thought it wuz real smart.

Somebody wuz lamentin’ the fact in our hearin’ that so many thieves and villains of all sorts had congregated at St. Louis this summer, and Josiah sez: 

“It’s a first rate thing for sinners to come here to git acclimated, as it were, before they die.”

I hadn’t thought on’t, but felt there wuz sunthin’ in it, for truly the burnin’ climate of the place I don’t want to speak on by name, must be easier to bear after visitin’ St. Louis than to plunge into it from cooler and more northern States.  And still I don’t know why we should want to make it easier for ’em, I spoze it wuz our pityin’ naters that made us think ont.

The weather wuz simply burnin’ hot, no other word describes it, oveny, furnacy hot! and Josiah said, and well said, it set folks to thinkin’ and inclined ’em to take warnin’ and mend their ways.  Sez he, “Two days of St. Louis weather wuz worth more to sinners than the sermons of a month of winter Sundays.”

Truly in heat it wuz a great object lesson.  I wore my brown lawn dress day after day, havin’ no chance to wear my rich alpacky, as I wanted to, to kinder show off before Miss Huff, and Blandina presented the wilted appearance of a long slim cabbage leaf plunged in bilin’ water.

I believe Josiah’s groanin’s and takin’s on and mutterin’s helped him to bear it better than if he had held in.  Not that I told him so, no, I told him it wuz onmanly to carry on so.  But truly the heat wuz fearful, our clothin’ stuck to us and prespiration and sweat run down our faces.

The next day it wuz so hot I felt kinder mauger and stayed to home.  Blandina and Miss Huff went half a day, and in the afternoon Blandina went to a big department store in the city to git some thinner underwear, and I got awful skairt about her.  Miss Huff gin her the most minute directions about where it wuz and what car to take, it wuzn’t a great ways off, and she ort to got back at four o’clock anyway.

But time run along, four struck, then five and then six, and I wuz gittin’ dretful worried about her when she come in tired enough.

Sez I, “I wuz awful worried about you, Blandina.  Did you git lost?”