heir feelin's, like the stronger sext does.

I tell you, it wuz happy times for Lizzie an' me and Marthy an'
Bill--happy times on the 'jinin' farms, with the pastures full uv fat
cattle, an' the barns full uv hay an' grain, and the twin cottages full
uv love an' contentment! Then when Cyrus come--our little boy--our
first an' only one! why, when _he_ come, I wuz jest _so_ happy an' so
grateful that if I had n't been a man I guess I 'd have hollered--maybe
cried--with joy. Wanted to call the little tyke Bill, but Bill would
n't hear to nothin' but Cyrus. You see, he 'd bought a cyclopeedy the
winter we wuz all marr'ed an' had been readin' in it uv a great foreign
warrior named Cyrus that lived a long spell ago.

"Land uv Goshen, Bill!" sez I, "you don't reckon the baby 'll ever be a
warrior?"

"Well, I don't know about that," sez Bill. "There 's no tellin'. At
any rate, Cyrus Ketcham has an uncommon sound for a name; so Cyrus it
must be, an' when he 's seven years old I 'll gin him the finest Morgan
colt in the deestrick!"

So we called him Cyrus, an' he grew up lovin' and bein' loved by
everybody.

Well, along about two years--or, say, eighteen months or so--after
Cyrus come to us a little girl baby come to Bill an' Marthy, an' of all
the cunnin' sweet little things you ever seen that little girl baby was
the cunnin'est an' sweetest! Looked jest like one of them foreign
crockery figgers you buy in city stores--all pink an' white, with big
brown eyes here, an' a teeny, weeney mouth there, an' a nose an' ears,
you'd have bet they wuz wax--they wuz so small an' fragile. Never
darst hold her for fear I 'd break her, an' it liked to skeered me to
death to see the way Marthy and Lizzie would kind uv toss her round an'
trot her--so--on their knees or pat her--so--on the back when she wuz
collicky like the wimmin folks sez all healthy babies is afore they 're
three months old.

"You 're goin' to have the namin' uv her," sez Bill to me.

"Yes," sez Marthy; "we made it up atween us long ago that you should
have the namin' uv _our_ baby like _we_ had the namin' uv yourn."

Then, kind uv hectorin' like--for I was always a powerful tease--I sez:
"How would Cleopatry do for a name? or Venis? I have been readin' the
cyclopeedy myself, I 'd have you know!"

An' then I laffed one on them provokin' laffs uv mine--oh, I tell ye, I
was the worst feller for hectorin' folks you ever seen! But I meant it
all in fun, for wh