ked
me up so that I might' have the first news of it. I am sure--says
I--I wish you both joy. Merriage is a blessed thing when folks is well
sorted, and it is an honorable thing, and the first meracle was at the
merriage in Canaan. It brings a great sight of happiness with it, as
I've had a chance of knowing, for my hus--

The Landlady showed her usual tendency to "break" from the
conversational pace just at this point, but managed to rein in the
rebellious diaphragm, and resumed her narrative.

--Merriage!--says she,--pray who has said anything about merriage?--I
beg your pardon, ma'am,--says I,--I thought you had spoke of changing
your condition and I--She looked so I stopped right short.

-Don't say another word, says she, but jest listen to what I am going to
tell you.

--My friend, says she, that you have seen with me so often lately, was
hunting among his old Record books, when all at once he come across an
old deed that was made by somebody that had my family name. He took it
into his head to read it over, and he found there was some kind of a
condition that if it was n't kept, the property would all go back to
them that was the heirs of the one that gave the deed, and that he found
out was me. Something or other put it into his head, says she, that the
company that owned the property--it was ever so rich a company and owned
land all round everywhere--hadn't kept to the conditions. So he went to
work, says she, and hunted through his books and he inquired all round,
and he found out pretty much all about it, and at last he come to me--it
's my boarder, you know, that says all this--and says he, Ma'am, says
he, if you have any kind of fancy for being a rich woman you've only got
to say so. I didn't know what he meant, and I began to think, says she,
he must be crazy. But he explained it all to me, how I'd nothing to do
but go to court and I could get a sight of property back. Well, so she
went on telling me--there was ever so much more that I suppose was all
plain enough, but I don't remember it all--only I know my boarder was
a good deal worried at first at the thought of taking money that other
people thought was theirs, and the Register he had to talk to her, and
he brought a lawyer and he talked to her, and her friends they talked to
her, and the upshot of it all was that the company agreed to settle the
business by paying her, well, I don't know just how much, but enough to
make her one of the rich folks