three days and four nights. You'd
better believe I got pretty wild about it, but I come to court every day
an' waited an' waited, bringin' somethin' to eat in a baskit.

"One day, at dinner-time, I seed the judge astandin' at the court-room
door, a-wipin' his forrid with a handkerchief, an' I went up to him an'
said, 'Do you think, sir, they'll get through this thing soon?'

"'I can't say, indeed,' said he. 'Are you interested in the case?'

"'I should think I was,' said I, an' then I told him about Jone's bein'
a juryman, an' how we was on our bridal-trip.

"'You've got my sympathy, madam,' says he, 'but it's a difficult case to
decide, an' I don't wonder it takes a good while.'

"'Nor I nuther,' says I, 'an' my opinion about these things is, that if
you'd jus' have them lawyers shut up in another room, an' make 'em do
their talkin' to theirselves, the jury could keep their minds clear, and
settle the cases in no time.'

"'There's some sense in that, madam,' says he, an' then he went into
court ag'in.

"Jone never had no chance to jine in with the other fellers, for they
couldn't agree, an' they were all discharged, at last. So the whole
thing went for nuthin.

"When Jone come out, he looked like he'd been drawn through a pump-log,
an' he says to me, tired-like,

"'Has there been a frost?'

"'Yes,' says I, 'two of 'em.'

"'All right, then,' says he. 'I've had enough of bridal-trips, with
their dry falls, their lunatic asylums, and their jury-boxes. Let's
go home and settle down. We needn't be afraid, now that there's been a
frost.'"

"Oh, why will you live in such a dreadful place?" cried Euphemia. "You
ought to go somewhere where you needn't be afraid of chills."

"That's jus' what I thought, ma'am," returned Pomona. "But Jone an' me
got a disease-map of this country an' we looked all over it careful, an'
wherever there wasn't chills there was somethin' that seemed a good deal
wuss to us. An' says Jone, 'If I'm to have anything the matter with me,
give me somethin' I'm used to. It don't do for a man o' my time o' life
to go changin' his diseases.'"

"So home we went. An' there we is now. An' as this is the end of the
bridal-trip story, I'll go an' take a look at the cow an' the chickens
an' the horse, if you don't mind."

Which we didn't,--and we gladly went with her over the estate.

CHAPTER XVII. IN WHICH WE TAKE A VACATION AND LOOK FOR DAVID DUTTON.

It was about noon of a very fair July