I almost rolled off the porch up-stairs, where I was watching.  I never did know before how much a man thinks of his pants.

He soon had Miss Bray and Miss Jones and a lot of the girls out in the yard, and everybody was talking at once; and then I heard him say: 

“But I tell you, Miss Bray, I put ’em here, right on this woodpile.  And where are they?  You run this place, and you are responsible for—­”

“Not for pants.”  And Miss Bray’s voice was so shrill it sounded like a broken whistle.  “I’m responsible for no man’s pants.  When a man can’t take care of his pants, he shouldn’t have them.  Besides, you shouldn’t have left yours in the woodhouse when working in a Female Orphan Asylum.”  And she glared so at him that the poor male thing withered, and blushed real beautiful.

He’s a pretty young man, and I felt sorry for him when Miss Bray snapped so.  I certainly did.

“My overalls are my working-pants,” he said, real meek-like, and his voice was trembling so I thought he was going to cry.  “It’s very strange that in a place like this a man’s clothes are not safe.  I thought—­”

“Well, you had no business thinking.  Next time keep your pants on.”  And Miss Bray, who’s good on a bluff, pretended like she had been truly injured, and the poor little painter sat down.

Presently his face changed, as if a thought had come into his mind from a long way off, and he said, in another kind of voice: 

“I beg your pardon, Miss Bray.  I believe I know who done it.  It’s a friend of mine who tries to be funny every now and then, and calls it joking.  I’ll choke his liver out of him!” And he settled himself on the woodpile to wait until dark before he went home.

If anybody thinks that wedding was slumpy, they think wrong.  It was thrilly.  When the bride and groom and the bridesmaids came in, all the girls were standing in rows on either side of the walk, making an aisle in between, and they sang a wedding-song I had invented from my heart.

It was to the Lohengrin tune, which is a little wobbly for words, but they got them in all right, keeping time with their hands.  These are the words: 

    1

    Here comes the Bride,
    God save the Groom! 
    And please don’t let any chil-i-il-dren come,
    For they don’t know
    How children feel,
    Nor do they know how with chil-dren to deal.

    2

    She’s still an old maid,
    Though she would not have been
    Could she have mar-ri-ed any kind of man. 
    But she could not. 
    So to the Humane
    She came, and caus-ed a good deal of pain.

    3

    But now she’s here
    To be married, and go
    Away with her red-headed, red-bearded beau. 
    Have mercy, Lord,
    And help him to bear
    What we’ve been doing this many a year!

And such singing!  We’d been practising in the back part of the yard, and humming in bed, so as to get the words into the tune; but we hadn’t let out until that night.  That night we let go.