she'd get up in the night an' turn on all the
gases and smother me alive. But I fell asleep at last, an' when I woke
up, early in the mornin', the first thing I did was to feel for that
lunertic. But she was gone!"

CHAPTER XVI. IN WHICH AN OLD FRIEND APPEARS AND THE BRIDAL TRIP TAKES A
FRESH START.

"Gone?" cried Euphemia, who, with myself, had been listening most
intently to Pomona's story.

"Yes," continued Pomona, "she was gone. I give one jump out of bed
and felt the gases, but they was all right. But she was gone, an' her
clothes was gone. I dressed, as pale as death, I do expect, an' hurried
to Jone's room, an' he an' me an' the big man was all ready in no time
to go an' look for her. General Tom Thumb didn't seem very anxious, but
we made him hurry up an' come along with us. We couldn't afford to leave
him nowheres. The clerk down-stairs--a different one from the chap who
was there the night before--said that a middle-aged, elderly lady came
down about an hour before an' asked him to tell her the way to the
United States Bank, an' when he told her he didn't know of any such
bank, she jus' stared at him, an' wanted to know what he was put there
for. So he didn't have no more to say to her, an' she went out, an' he
didn't take no notice which way she went. We had the same opinion about
him that Mrs. Jackson had, but we didn't stop to tell him so. We hunted
up an' down the streets for an hour or more; we asked every policeman we
met if he'd seen her; we went to a police station; we did everything we
could think of, but no Mrs. Jackson turned up. Then we was so tired an'
hungry that we went into some place or other an' got our breakfast. When
we started out ag'in, we kep' on up one street an' down another, an'
askin' everybody who looked as if they had two grains of sense,--which
most of 'em didn't look as if they had mor'n one, an' that was in use
to get 'em to where they was goin.' At last, a little ways down a small
street, we seed a crowd, an' the minute we see it Jone an' me both
said in our inside hearts: 'There she is!' An' sure enough, when we got
there, who should we see, with a ring of street-loafers an' boys around
her, but Mrs. Andrew Jackson, with her little straw hat an' her green
carpet-slippers, a-dancin' some kind of a skippin' fandango, an'
a-holdin' out her skirts with the tips of her fingers. I was jus' agoin'
to rush in an' grab her when a man walks quick into the ring and touches
her o