to Euphemia on such subjects; she always had an
answer ready.

"You don't want Pomona to go off and be married, do you?" I asked, one
day as she was putting up some new muslin curtains in the kitchen. "You
seem to be helping her to do this all you can, and yet I don't know
where on earth you will get another girl who will suit you so well."

"I don't know, either," replied Euphemia, with a tack in her mouth, "and
I'm sure I don't want her to go. But neither do I want winter to come,
or to have to wear spectacles; but I suppose both of these things will
happen, whether I like it or not."

For some time after this Pomona had very little company, and we began to
think that there was no danger of any present matrimonial engagement on
her part,--a thought which was very gratifying to us, although we
did not wish in any way to interfere with her prospects,--when, one
afternoon, she quietly went up into the village and was married.

Her husband was a tall young fellow, a son of a farmer in the county,
who had occasionally been to see her, but whom she must have frequently
met on her "afternoons out."

When Pomona came home and told us this news we were certainly well
surprised.

"What on earth are we to do for a girl?" cried Euphemia.

"You're to have me till you can get another one," said Pomona quietly.
"I hope you don't think I'd go 'way, and leave you without anybody."

"But a wife ought to go to her husband," said Euphemia, "especially so
recent a bride. Why didn't you let me know all about it? I would have
helped to fit you out. We would have given you the nicest kind of a
little wedding."

"I know that," said Pomona; "you're jus' good enough. But I didn't want
to put you to all that trouble--right in preserving-time too. An' he
wanted it quiet, for he's awful backward about shows. An' as I'm to
go to live with his folks,--at least in a little house on the farm,--I
might as well stay here as anywhere, even if I didn't want to, for I
can't go there till after frost."

"Why not?" I asked.

"The chills and fever," said she. "They have it awful down in that
valley. Why, he had a chill while we was bein' married, right at the
bridal altar."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Euphemia. "How dreadful!"

"Yes, indeed," said Pomona. "He must 'a' forgot it was his chill-day,
and he didn't take his quinine, and so it come on him jus' as he was
apromisin' to love an' pertect. But he stuck it out, at the minister's
hous