ANDER OUT THERE IN A ICY NIGHT TO FEED IT."]

We kep it in a little warm shed offen the wood house for quite a spell,
but still I used to find it considerable cold when I would meander out
there in a icy night to feed it. But jest as it is always the way with
wimmen, the more care I took on it, the more it needed me and depended
on me, the better I liked it.

Till I got to likin' it so well that it wuzn't half so hard a job for me
to go out to feed it in the night as it would have been to laid still in
my warm bed and think mebby it wuz cold and hungry.

So I would pike out and feed it two or three times a night.

That is the nater of wimmen, the weaker it wuz and the humblier it wuz,
and the more it needed me, the more I thought on it.

And as is the nater of man, Josiah Allen didn't seem to care so much
about it while it wuz weak and humbly and spindlin'.

He told me time and agin, that I couldn't save it, and it never would
amount to anythin', and wuzn't nothin' but legs any way, and lots of
other slightin' remarks. And he'd call it "horse corset" in a kind of
a light, triflin' way, that wuz apt to gaul a woman when she come back
with icy night-gown and frosty toes and fingers, way along in the night.

[Illustration: "BEEN OUT TO TEND TO YOUR 'HORSE CORSET,' HAVE YOU?"]

He'd wake up, a-layin' there warm and comfortable on his soft goose
feather piller and say to me: "Been out to tend to your 'horse corset,'
have you?"

"_Horse corset_! 'Wall, what if it wuz?"

Such language way along in the night, from a warm comfortable pardner to
a cold one, is apt to make some words back and forth.

And then he'd speak of its legs agin, in the most slightin' terms--and
he'd ask me if didn't want its picter took--etc., etc., etc.

(I believe one thing that ailed Josiah Allen wuz he didn't want me to
get up and get my feet so cold).

But, as I wuz a-sayin', though I couldn't deny some of his words, for
truly its legs did seem to be at the least calculation a yard and a half
long, specilly in the night, why they'd look fairly pokerish.

And though I knew it wuz humbly still I persevered, and at last it
got to thrivin' and growin' fast. And the likelier it grew, and the
stronger, and the handsomer, so Josiah Allen's likin' for it grew and
increased, till he got to settin' a sight of store by it.

And now it wuz a two-year-old, and he had sold it for two hundred and
fifteen dollars. It wuz spozed it wuz goin' to make