riggled a
minute an' says, 'Wa'al, I reckon I'm all o' thirty,' she says."

"All o' thirty!" exclaimed Aunt Polly. "The woman 's most 's old 's I
be."

David laughed and went on with, "Wa'al, Dick said at that the dominie
give a kind of a choke, an' Dick he bust right out, an' Lize looked at
him as if she c'd eat him. Dick said the dominie didn't say anythin' fer
a minute or two, an' then he says to Am, 'I suppose you c'n find
somebody that'll marry you, but I cert'inly won't, an' what possesses
you to commit such a piece o' folly,' he says, 'passes my understandin'.
What earthly reason have you fer wantin' to marry? On your own showin','
he says, 'neither one on you 's got a cent o' money or any settled way
o' gettin' any.'

[Illustration]

"'That's jes' the very reason,' says Am, 'that's jes' the _very
reason_. I hain't got nothin', an' Mis' Annis hain't got nothin', an' we
figured that we'd jes' better git married an' settle down, an' make a
good home fer us both,' an' if that ain't good reasonin'," David
concluded, "I don't know what is."

"An' be they actially married?" asked Mrs. Bixbee, still incredulous of
anything so preposterous.

"So Dick says," was the reply. "He says Am an' Lize come away f'm the
dominie's putty down in the mouth, but 'fore long Amri braced up an'
allowed that if he had half a dollar he'd try the squire in the mornin',
an' Dick let him have it. I says to Dick, 'You're out fifty cents on
that deal,' an' he says, slappin' his leg, 'I don't give a dum,' he
says; 'I wouldn't 'a' missed it fer double the money.'"

Here David folded his napkin and put it in the ring, and John finished
the cup of clear coffee which Aunt Polly, rather under protest, had
given him. Coffee without cream and sugar was incomprehensible to Mrs.
Bixbee.

THE END

Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation in the original
book have been retained.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christmas Story from David Harum, by
Edward Noyes Westcott

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