' borin' into his ear
'ith his middle finger, 'I got the promise mebbe of a job o' work fer a
couple o' days next week.' 'H'm'm'm,' says the dominie, lookin' at him.
'Have _you_ got anythin' to git married on?' the dominie says, turnin'
to Lize. 'I've got ninety cents comin' to me fer some work I done last
week,' she says, wiltin' down onto the sofy an' beginnin' to snivvle.
Dick says that at that the dominie turned round an' walked to the other
end of the room, an' he c'd see he was dyin' to laugh, but he come back
with a straight face.

"'How old air you, Shapless?" he says to Am. 'I'll be fifty-eight or
mebbe fifty-nine come next spring,' says Am.

"'How old air _you_?' the dominie says, turnin' to Lize. She wriggled a
minute an' says, 'Wa'al, I reckon I'm all o' thirty,' she says."

"All o' thirty!" exclaimed Aunt Polly. "The woman 's most 's old 's I
be."

David laughed and went on with, "Wa'al, Dick said at that the dominie
give a kind of a choke, an' Dick he bust right out, an' Lize looked at
him as if she c'd eat him. Dick said the dominie didn't say anythin' fer
a minute or two, an' then he says to Am, 'I suppose you c'n find
somebody that'll marry you, but I cert'inly won't, an' what possesses
you to commit such a piece o' folly,' he says, 'passes my
understandin'. What earthly reason have you fer wantin' to marry? On
your own showin',' he says, 'neither one on you 's got a cent o' money
or any settled way o' gettin' any.'

"'That's jest the very reason,' says Am, 'that's jest the _very reason_.
I hain't got nothin', an' Mis' Annis hain't got nothin', an' we figured
that we'd jest better git married an' settle down, an' make a good home
fer us both,' an' if that ain't good reasonin'," David concluded, "I
don't know what is."

"An' be they actially married?" asked Mrs. Bixbee, still incredulous of
anything so preposterous.

"So Dick says," was the reply. "He says Am an' Lize come away f'm the
dominie's putty down in the mouth, but 'fore long Amri braced up an'
allowed that if he had half a dollar he'd try the squire in the mornin',
an' Dick let him have it. I says to Dick, 'You're out fifty cents on
that deal,' an' he says, slappin' his leg, 'I don't give a dum,' he
says; 'I wouldn't 'a' missed it fer double the money.'"

Here David folded his napkin and put it in the ring, and John finished
the cup of clear coffee which Aunt Polly, rather under protest, had
given him. Coffee without cream and sugar w