you counted the cost, Josiah?"

"I know it will cost, you're hefty and big boneded and I'd want you
heroic size, but we needn't have your hull frame made in posies, I could
plant you in different seeds and raise you like a crop, and sell you in
the fall. Beans would look well in different colors."

He see my look of cold irony as he spoke of sellin' me, and added, "Or I
could set you out mostly in pusley if you'd ruther, the garden is full
of it."

"I shall never be sot out in pusley, Josiah Allen, I always hated it.
The hull thing is as crazy as anything you ever undertook."

"Crazy or not it will be did; summer squash would look well and be
equinomical, I could probable train 'em so you'd seem to be holdin' the
squashes in your arms."

"Give up the hull skeem, Josiah Allen; don't try to combine love and
economy so clost."

But he vowed he wouldn't give it up, and I spoze I may see trouble
weanin' him from the idee.

That night whilst I wuz restin' a little in my room after supper, Josiah
havin' stayed down in the parlor a spell talkin' to granpa Huff and
Billy, Blandina come into my room. She wuz all fagged out, but under the
fag you could see that expression of perennial good nature and love to
man.

She said she'd been readin' all day to grandpa Huff and as near as I
could make out he'd kep' her right down to them blood-curdlin' chapters
where they fried the martyrs in ile and briled 'em on grid-irons. She
looked dretful tired and I told her I wouldn't gin in and read such
stuff all day.

But she said Mr. Huff wuz anxious to hear it and she wuz perfectly
willin' and more than willin' to please him, for sez she smilin' in a
queer sort of a way and sort o' bridlin' a little, "I'm anxious to do
anything for him I can because I love him devotedly."

I wuz fairly stunted. "Love him?" sez I, "why how long ago wuz it that
you loved his grandchild passionately? Why," sez I, "Blandina, you seem
to rob the cradle and the grave for objects of affection."

"Yes, I did love Billy with perfect devotion till I found that my
affection wuz driven back like a dove from the rest it fain would made
in his youthful heart, and now it has settled down upon his grandpa's
bosom. Mr. Huff needs a companion, Aunt Samantha. He needs a tender
female companion to journey by his side over the rough pathway of life.
And, oh, I do feel that this world is a cold rough place and my heart,
like that wanderin' dove I spoke on, sithes to