he acted so queerly about my
flowers. It happens that I am partial to old-time favorites, and I grow
as many of them as I can get to succeed in this altitude; so I have
zinnias, marigolds, hollyhocks, and many other dear old flowers that my
mother loved. Many of them had been the favorites of Miss Em'ly's
childhood, but Bishey hadn't remembered the names; so he had visited us
all, and when he found a flower he remembered, he asked the name and
how we grew it, then he tried it, until at last he had about all. Miss
Em'ly wiped the tears from her eyes as she remarked, "Bishey, you did
well; yes, you did _real_ well." I thought to myself how well we could
_all_ do if we were so encouraged.

At last the white-haired old justice of the peace came, and said the
words that made Emily Wheeler the wife of Abisha Bennet. A powerfully
noisy but truly friendly crowd wished them well. One polite fellow
asked her where she was from. She told him from New York _State_.
"Why," he asked, "do New Yorkers always say _State_?" "Why, because,"
she answered,--and her eyes were big with surprise,--"_no_ one would
want to say they were from New York _City_."

It had been a trying day for us, so soon Jerrine and I slipped out to
our room. Ours was the first room off the sitting-room, and a long
hallway led past our door; a bench sat against the wall, and it seemed
a favorite roosting-place for people with long discussions. First some
fellows were discussing the wedding. One thought Bishey "cracked"
because he had shipped out an old cooking-stove, one of the first
manufactured, all the way from where he came from, instead of buying a
new one nearer home. They recalled instance after instance in which he
had acted queerly, but to me his behavior was no longer a mystery. I
know the stove belonged somewhere in the past and that his every act
connected past and future. After they had talked themselves tired, two
old fellows took possession of the bench and added a long discussion on
how to grow corn to the general din. Even sweet corn cannot be
successfully grown at this altitude, yet those old men argued pro and
con till I know their throats must have ached. In the sitting-room they
all talked at once of ditches, water-contracts, and sheep. I was _so_
sleepy. I heard a tired clock away off somewhere strike two. Some
sheep-men had the bench and were discussing the relative values of
different dips. I reckon my ego must have gotten tangled with some