“Do you suppose I am ever goin’ to lose sight of you agin?  No indeed!”

And I sez, “Wall, come right home with us to Jonesville, and keep your eyes on her.”

I wuz as happy as a king, and he knew it.  And he thinks a sight of me, for it wuz through me, he sez, that their meetin’ wuz brought about.

He didn’t say he wouldn’t do that, so I wuz greatly in hopes that that would be the way it would turn out.

I thought to myself, “Oh, how I would love to have ’em married in my parlor, right back of the hangin’ lamp!”

The semi-detatched widder said she got a letter about that time bringin’ her bad news, trials, and tribulations, so it wuzn’t to be wondered that she looked sad and worried.  Mebby she did git such a letter.

But anyway she and Miss Plank made up with each other.  They become clost friends.  Miss Plank told me, “She loved her like a sister.”

And the semi-detatched widder told me, “If she ever see a woman that she thought more on than she did her own mother, it wuz Miss Plank.”

Wall, I wuz glad enough to see ’em reconciled, for they had been at such sword’s pints, as you may say, that it made it dretful disagreeable to the other boarders.

Miss Piddock acted, and I believe wuz tickled, to see Mr. Freeman’s happiness; for he didn’t make any secret of it, and couldn’t, if he wanted to.  For radiant eyes and blissful smiles would have told the story of his joy, if his lips hadn’t.

Miss Piddock said that “if Mr. Piddock had been alive that he could say truly that he could sympathize with him in every respect, for that dear departed man had known, if anybody had, true connubial bliss.”

And then she brung up such piles of reminiscences of that man, that I felt as if I must sink under ’em.

But I didn’t; I managed to keep my head above ’em, and keep on a-breathin’ as calm and stiddy as I could.

Even Nony acted a trifle less bitter and austeer when he heard the news, and made the remark, “That he hoped that he would be happy.”  But there wuz a dark and shudderin’ oncertainty and onbelief in his cold eyes as he said that “Hope” that wuz dretful deprestin’ to me—­not to Mr. Freeman; no, that blessed creeter wuz too happy to be affected by such glacial congratulations as Nony Piddock’s.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Of course, feelin’ as I did about my Uncle Samuel, it wouldn’t have done to not gone to the Government Buildin’, where he makes his headquarters, so to say.

Like the other palaces, this is so vast that it seemed as we stepped up to it some like wadin’ out into Lake Michigan to examine her.

We couldn’t do it—­we couldn’t do justice to Michigan with one pair of feet and eyes—­no, indeed.

Wall, no more we couldn’t do justice to these buildin’s unless we laid out to live as long as Methusleah did, and hang round here for a hundred years or so.