al tickled to death. You see, 'twas a good while sence Jonadab
and me had been to a wedding, and we know there'd be mostly young folks
there and a good many big-bugs, we presumed likely, and 'twas going to
cost consider'ble to get rigged--not to mention the price of passage,
and one thing a' 'nother. But Ebenezer had took the trouble to write
us, and so we felt 'twas our duty not to disappoint him, and especially
Peter, who had done so much for us, managing the Old Home House.

The Old Home House was our summer hotel at Wellmouth Port. How me and
Jonadab come to be in the summer boarding trade is another story and
it's too long to tell now. We never would have been in it, anyway, I
cal'late, if it hadn't been for Peter. He made a howling success of our
first season and likewise helped himself along by getting engaged to the
star boarder, rich old Dillaway's daughter--Ebenezer Dillaway, of the
Consolidated Cash Stores.

Well, we see 'twas our duty to go, so we went. I had a new Sunday
cutaway and light pants to go with it, so I figgered that I was pretty
well found, but Cap'n Jonadab had to pry himself loose from considerable
money, and every cent hurt as if 'twas nailed on. Then he had chilblains
that winter, and all the way over in the Fall River boat he was fuming
about them chilblains, and adding up on a piece of paper how much cash
he'd spent.

We struck Cashmere-on-the-Hudson about three o'clock on the afternoon of
the day of the wedding. 'Twas a little country kind of a town, smaller
by a good deal than Orham, and so we cal'lated that perhaps after all,
the affair wouldn't be so everlasting tony. But when we hove in sight of
Dillamead--Ebenezer's place--we shortened sail and pretty nigh drew
out of the race. 'Twas up on a high bank over the river, and the
house itself was bigger than four Old Homes spliced together. It had a
fair-sized township around it in the shape of land, with a high
stone wall for trimming on the edges. There was trees, and places for
flower-beds in summer, and the land knows what. We see right off
that this was the real Cashmere-on-the-Hudson; the village folks were
stranded on the flats--old Dillaway filled the whole ship channel.

"Well," I says to Jonadab, "it looks to me as if we was getting out of
soundings. What do you say to coming about and making a quick run for
Orham again?"

But he wouldn't hear of it. "S'pose I've spent all that money on duds
for nothing?" he says. "No, sir,