st was readily promised, good-nights
were exchanged, and the lessened circle drew in more closely around the
stove, for several of the company had reluctantly decided that, all
things considered, it would be the better part of valor for them to go
when Mr. Pegram went.

There was a few minutes' silence, and then Mr. Dickey said impatiently,
"We're all ready, Uncle Jabez. Why don't you fire away, so's to be
through by ten o'clock?"

"I was a-thinkin' which one I'd best tell him," said Uncle Jabez mildly.
"They're all convincin' to a mind that's open to convincement, but I'd
like to pick out the one that's most so."

"There's the one about Alviry Pratt's grandfather," suggested Mr.
Crumlish encouragingly.

"No," mused the old man. "I've no doubt of that myself, but then it
didn't happen to me in person, and I've a notion he'd rather hear one
I've experienced than two I've heard tell of."

"Of course I would, Uncle Jabez," said Mr. Birchard kindly, but with an
amused twinkle in his eyes. "You take your own time: it's only just
struck nine, and there's no hurry at all."

"Supposin' I was to tell him that one about my first wife?" said the old
man presently, and with an inquiring look around the circle.

Several heads were nodded approvingly, and Mr. Crumlish said, "The very
one I'd 'a' chosen myself if you'd ast me."

Thus encouraged, Uncle Jabez, with a sort of deliberate promptness,
began: "We married very young, Lavina and me,--too young, some said, but
I never could see why, for I had a good farm, with health and strength
to carry it on, and she was a master-hand with butter and cheese. At any
rate, we thriv; and if we had plenty of children, there was plenty for
'em to eat, and they grew as fast as everything else did. She wasn't
what you'd fairly call handsome, Lavina wasn't, but she was
pleasant-appearin', very,--plump as a pa'tridge, with nice brown hair
and eyes and a clean-lookin' skin. But it was her smile in particular
that took me; and when she set in to laugh you couldn't no more' help
laughin' along with her than one bobolink can help laughin' back when he
hears another. She was the tenderest-hearted woman that ever breathed
the breath of life: she couldn't bear to hurt the feelin's of a cat, and
she'd go 'ithout a chicken-dinner any day sooner'n kill a chicken. As
time passed on and she begun to age a little, she grew stouter 'n'
stouter; but it didn't seem to worry her none. She'd puff and blow a