ot set here."

He jest marched out of the door and didn't say good bye or good day or
anything. But I didn't care. I knowed the minute his card wuz handed
to me jest how many wives he had and how he wuz doin' all he could to
uphold what he called his religion, but I did hope I'd done him some
good but felt dubersome about it. But knowin' I'd clung to Duty's
apron strings I felt like leavin' the event. And when Miss Meechim
come in I wuz settin' calm and serene in a big chair windin' some
clouded blue and white yarn, Aronette holdin' the skein. I'd brung
along a lot of woollen yarn to knit Josiah some socks on the way, to
make me feel more homelike.

And the next day we proceeded on to California.

CHAPTER V

Miss Meechim and Dorothy looked brighter and happier as every
revolution of the wheels brought us nearer their old home, and they
talked about Robert Strong and other old friends I never see.

"Be it ever so humbly,
There is no place like hum."

My heart sung them words and carried two parts, one sulferino and one
bear tone. The high part caused by my lofty emotions and sweet
recollections of home, that hallowed spot; the minor chords caused by
feelin's I have so often recapitulated. Tommy, as the day wore on,
went to sleep, and I covered him tenderly on the seat with my little
shoulder shawl, and sot there alone; alone, as the cars bore us
onward, sometimes through broad green fields of alfalfa, anon over a
bridge half a mile long, from whence you could look down and see the
flowing stream beneath like a little skein of silver yarn glistening
in the sun fur below, agin forests and valleys and farms and
homesteads, and anon in an opening through a valley, high bluffs,
beautifully colored, could be seen towering up over blue waters, up,
up as if they wuz bent on touching the fleecy clouds overhead. And
then a green sheltered valley, and then a high range of mountains seen
fur off as if overlookin' things to see that all wuz well, anon a big
city, then a village, then the green country agin, and so the pictures
passed before me as I sot there.

I had put on a pair of new cuffs and a collar, made for me and
hemstitched by Waitstill Webb, and gin to me by her, though I wanted
to pay her. Sweet little creeter! how good she wuz to me and to
everybody, and I thought of her sad history, and hoped that brighter
days wuz ahead on her. I d'no as I've told the reader much about her
history, and mebby I