in a threatenin' way, "You hain't hearn the last of this, young man.
Square Baker of Jonesville will git onto your tracks, and you'd better
have a tiger after you than have him when he's rousted up. Pay for
comin' home from meetin', it is a disgrace to the nation! Call this a
land of liberty when you have to pay for comin' home from meetin'!"

And sez he, as he took his change back, "Do you know what you're doin'?
You're drivin' Samantha and me away from this place, and Blandina." And
sez he, with an air of shootin' his sharpest arrer, "We shall go to Miss
Huff's to-morry."

And so we did. Blandina and I wanted to go there in the first place, so
we felt well about it. We had fulfilled our duties as chaperones to the
fullest extent, and had also got our own two ways in the end, which is
always comfortin' to a woman.

We found Miss Huff settled in a pleasant street in a good comfortable
home, not so very fur away from the Fair ground. She's a widder with one
son, young and good lookin', jest home from school; and a aged parent,
toothless and no more hair on his head than on the cover of my glass
butter dish. And I'll be hanged if I knowed which one on 'em Blandina
paid the most devoted attention to whilst we wuz there, but nothin'
light and triflin'.

She is likely, her morals mebby bein' able to stand more bein' so sort
o' withy and soft than if they wuz more hard and brittle, they could
bend round considerable without breakin'.

And Miss Huff had also a little grand-niece, Dorothy Evans, whose mother
had passed away, and Miss Huff bein' next of kin had took into her
family to take care of. Dretful clever I thought it wuz of Miss Huff.
Dorothy's mother, I guess, didn't have much faculty and spent everything
as she went along; she had an annuity that died with her, but she had
been well enough off so she could hire a nurse for the child, an elderly
colored woman, Aunt Tryphena by name, who out of love for the little one
had offered to come to Miss Huff's just to be near the little girl.

And Dotie, as they well called her, for everyone doted on her, wuz as
sweet a little fairy as I ever see, her pretty golden head carried
sunshine wherever it went. And her big blue eyes, full of mischief
sometimes, wuz also full of the solemn sweetness of them "Who do always
behold the face of the Father."

I took to her from the very first, and so did Josiah and Blandina. The
hull family loved and petted her from Miss Huff and he