akes em' happy, is the thought that they are a keepin'
trouble and care offen wimmen. That is a sweet thought to men, and
always wuz. And there wuz great strains put onto our minds, us men that
sot, that wimmen couldn't be expected to grapple with, and hadn't ort to
try to. It wuz a great strain onto us."

"What was the nater of the strain?" sez I. "I didn't know as you did a
thing only sot still there and go to sleep. _You_ wuz fast asleep there
most the hull of the time, for it come straight to me from them that
know. And all that Deacon Bobbet did who went with you wuz to hold up
his hand two or three times a votin'. I shouldn't think that wuz so
awful wearin'."

And agin I sez, "What wuz the strain?"

But Josiah didn't answer, for that very minute he remembered a pressin'
engagement he had about borrowin' a plow. He said he had got to go up to
Joe Charnick's to get his plow. (I don't believe he wanted a plow that
time of night.) But he hurried away from the spot. And soon after Submit
went home lookin' more deprested and down-casted than ever.

And Josiah Allen didn't get home till _late_ at night. I dare persume to
say it wuz as late as a quarter to nine when that man got back to the
bosom of his family.

And I sot there all alone, and a-meditatin' on things, and a-wonderin'
what under the sun he wuz a-traipsin up to Joe Charnick's for at that
time of night, and a-worryin' some for fear he wuz a-keepin' Miss
Charnick up, and a-spozin' in my mind what Miss Charnick would do, to
get along with the meetin' house, and the Conference question, if she
wuz a member. (She is a _very_ sensible woman, Jenette Charnick is,
_very_, and a great favorite with me, and others.)

And I got to thinkin' how prosperus and happy she is now, and how much
she had went through. And I declare the hull thing come back to me, all
the strange and curius circumstances connected with her courtship and
marriage, and I thought it all out agin, the hull story, from beginnin'
to end.

The way it begun wuz--and the way Josiah Allen and me come to have any
connectin with the story wuz as follers:

Some time ago, and previus, we had a widder come to stay with us a
spell, she that wuz Tamer Shelmadine, Miss Trueman Pool that now is.

Her husband died several years ago, and left her not over and above
well off. And so she goes round a-visitin', and has went ever sense his
death. And finds sights of faults with things wherever she is, sights of