ss baby, with the
pity added that gray hairs and toothless gums must amount to added up
over the sum of dimples and ivory and coral that makes up a baby's
beautiful helplessness.

And they wuz took from her dretful sudden. There wuz a sort of a
influenza prevailin' up round their way, and lots of strong healthy
folks suckumbed to it, and it struck onto these poor old feeble ones
some like simiters, and mowed 'em right down.

The old lady wuz took down first, and her great anxiety wuz--"That Pa
shouldn't know that she wuz so sick."

But before she died, "Pa" in another room wuz took with it, and passed
away a day before she did.

She worried all that mornin' about "Pa," and--"How bad he would feel if
he knew she wuz so sick!" But along late in the afternoon, when the
Winter sun wuz makin' a pale reflection on the wall through the south
winder, she looked up, and sez she--

"Why, there stands Pa right by my bed, and he wants me to git up and go
with him. And, Isabelle, I must go."

And she did.

[Illustration: "Why, there stands Pa, and he wants me to git up and
go with him."]

And Isabelle wuz left alone.

They wuz buried in one grave. And the funeral sermon, they say, wuz
enough to melt a stun, if there had been any stuns round where they
could hear it.

Isabelle didn't hear it (don't git the idee that I am a-wantin' to
compare her to a stun; no, fur from it). She wuz a-layin' to home on a
bed, with her sad eyes bent on nothin'ess and emptiness and utter
desolation, so it seemed to her.

But after a time she begun to pick up a little, judgin' from her letters
to her brother Krit. He had to leave her jest after the funeral on
account of his business; for, civil as it wuz, it had to be tended to.

CHAPTER II.

Wall, we all enjoyed havin' Christopher there the best that ever wuz.
For he wuz very agreeable, as well as oncommon smart, which two
qualities don't always go together, as has often been observed by
others, and I have seen for myself.

Wall, it wuzn't more than a week or so after Krit arrived and got there,
that another relation made his appearance in Jonesville.

It wuz of 'em on his side this time--not like Krit, half hisen and half
mine, but clear hisen. Clear Allen, with no Smith at all in the
admixture.

Proud enough wuz my pardner of him, and of himself too for bein' born
his cousin. (Though that wuz onbeknown to him at the time, and he ort
not to have gloried in it.)

But t