E SAID I HAD RUBBED 'EM OUT."]

Wall, at last Josiah got the stove in, but then the stove-pipe wouldn't
go together, it wouldn't seem to fit. He had marked the joints with
chalk, and the marks had rubbed off, and he said I had "rubbed 'em out."
I wuz just as innocent as a babe, but I didn't dispute him much, for I
see a little crack open in the parlor door, and I knew the author of
"Wedlock's Peaceful Repose" was a-listenin'.

But when he told me for the third time that I rubbed 'em out on purpose
to make him trouble, and that I had made a practice of rubbin' 'em out
for years and years--why, then I _had_ to correct him on the subject,
and we had a little dialogue.

I spoze Serena Fogg heard it. But human nater can't bear only just so
much, especially when it has stoves a dirtien up the floor, and apple
sass on its mind, and unexpected company, and no cookin' and a threshin'
machine a-comin'.

CHAPTER IV.

Never knew a word about the threshin' machine a-comin' till about half
an hour before. Josiah Allen wuzn't to blame. It come just as onexpected
onto him as it did onto me.

Solomon Gowdey wuz a-goin' to have 'em first, which would have left me
ample time to cook up for 'em. But he wuz took down bed sick, so they
had to come right onto us with no warnin' previous and beforehand.

They wuz a drivin' up just as Josiah got the stove-pipe up. They had to
go right by the side of the house, right by the parlor winders, to get
to the side of the barn where they wanted to thresh; and just as they
wuz a-goin' by one of the horses got down, and of all the yellin' I ever
heard that was the cap sheaf.

Steve Yerden is rough on his horses, dretful rough. He yells at 'em
enough to raise the ruff. His threshin' machine is one of the kind where
the horses walk up and look over the top. It is kinder skairful any way,
and it made it as bad agin when you expected to see the horse fall out
every minute.

Wall, that very horse fell out of the machine three times that day. It
wuz a sick horse, I believe, and hadn't ort to have been worked. But
three times it fell, and each time the yellin' wuz such that it skairt
the author of "Peaceful Repose," and me, almost to death.

The machine wuz in plain sight of the house, and every time we see the
horse's head come a mountin' up on top of the machine, we expected that
over it would go. But though it didn't fall out only three times, as I
said, it kep' us all nerved up and uneas