might as well whilst we are rushin' on so fast,
and Tommy is asleep.

Alan Thorne, the young man she wuz engaged to, wuz brung up by a uncle
who had a family of his own to love and tend to, but he did his duty
by Alan, gin him a good education and a comfortable, if not
affectionate, home in his family. But it wuz a big family all bound up
in each other, and Alan had seemed like one who looks on through a
winder at the banquet of Life and Love, kinder hungry and lonesome
till he met Waitstill Webb. Then their two hearts and souls rushed
together like two streams of water down an inclined plane. They
literally seemed to be two bodies with one heart, one soul, one
desire, one aspiration. He had always been industrious, honest and
hard workin'. Now he had sunthin' to work for; and for the three years
after he met Waitstill he worked like a giant. He wuz earning a home
for his wife, his idol; how happy he wuz in his efforts, his work, and
how happy she wuz to see it, and to work herself in her quiet way for
the future.

He had bought a home about a mile out of the city, where he was
employed, and had got it all payed for. It wuz a beautiful little
cottage with a few acres of land round it, and he had got his garden
all laid out and a orchard of fruit trees of all kinds, and trees and
flowering shrubs and vines around the pretty cottage. There wuz a
little pasture where he wuz to keep his cow and a horse, that she
could take him with to his work mornings and drive round where she
wanted to, and there wuz a meadow lot with a little rivulet running
through it, and they had already planned a rustic bridge over the
dancing stream, and a trout pond, and she had set out on its borders
some water lilies, pink and white, and Showy Ladies and other wild
flowers, and she jest doted on her posy garden and strawberry beds,
and they'd bought two or three hives of bees in pretty boxes and took
them out there; they had rented the place to a old couple till they
wanted it themselves. And every holiday and Sunday they walked out to
their own place, and the sun did not shine any brighter on their
little home than the sun of hope and happiness did in their hearts as
they pictured their life there in that cozy nest.

And Alan Thorne, after he loved Waitstill, not only tried to win
outward success for her sake; he tried to weed out all the weaknesses
of his nater, to make himself more worthy of her. He said to himself
when he would go to see