She and Whitfield wuzn’t a-comin’ to the Fair at all.

By the time she got her oyster-shell stockin’s done, the weather had moderated, so it wuz too cool to wear ’em, and it was too late then to begin woosted ones (of course, she could buy stockin’s, but she wuz sot on havin’ hand-made ones, bein’ so much nicer, and so much more liable to attract respect and admiration)—­

And then by that time the weather wuz so variable that she didn’t know whether to take summer clothes or winter ones, and so she dallied along till it got so late that Whitfield didn’t dast to take her out at all, she wuz so kinder mauger.

She had wore herself all out a-bonin’ down and knittin’ them stockin’s, and embroiderin’ them night-shirts, and preparin’ for the Fair, so they gin up comin’.

I felt bad.

CHAPTER XXI.

Wall, it wuz all settled as I wanted it to be.  Them two angels, as I couldn’t hardly keep callin’ ’em, if one of ’em wuz a he angel—­them two lovely good creeters wuz married right in the place where I wanted ’em to be married—­right in our parlor, in front of the picter of Grant, and not fur back of the hangin’ lamp, but fur enough back so’s to allow of a lovely bell of white roses and lilies to swing over their heads.

The bell wuz made of the white roses, and a fair white lily hung down, a-swingin’ its noiseless music out into the hearts below—­sacred music which we all seemed to hear in our inmost hearts as we looked into the faces that stood under that magic bell.

Isabelle had on a white muslin gown, plain, but shear and fine, and she wore a bunch of white roses at her belt and at her white throat, and she carried in her hand a bunch of rare ones.

But it all corresponded, for she wuz the white lily herself, as tall, and fair, and queenly.

Only when the words wuz said that made her Tom’s wife, her cheeks flushed up as no white lily ever did, even under the sun’s rosiest rays.

But a sun wuz a-shinin’ on her that went beyend any earthly sun—­it wuz the rays of the great planet Love that illuminated her face, and lit up her glorified eyes with the light that wuz never on sea nor on shore.

Her husband looked right into her face all the while the Elder wuz a-unitin’ ’em, a-lookin’ at her as if he could not quite believe in his happiness yet—­looked at her as one looks at a pearl of great price, when he has recovered it after a long loss.

I sez to Josiah, as I see that look on his face—­

“Many waters may not quench it, Josiah Allen, nor floods drown it, can they?”

And he brung me back to the present by remarkin’—­

“I wouldn’t bring up drowndins and conflagrations at such a time as this, Samantha.”

And I sithed and sez to myself, what I have said so many times to she that wuz Samantha Smith, in strict confidence—­