"He looked at me as if he couldn't quite see the connection.
'Well,' says he, 'here we are, and they're expectin' you, for
there's a lady waitin' on the platform.'

"'A lady?' says I, risin' from my tomb. I'd begun to think before
there was truth in the sayin', 'You can't win at two games on the
same day,' but when I heard there was a lady waitin' for me--well,
if there's any man in this here bull-pen can think what I thought,
let him whisper it in confidence, and I'll make it right with him.

"I never knew how I got off that train of cars.

"Well, I oughtn't to have been scart--it was the littlest,
thinnest, palest, tremblingest woman you ever saw--why, there
wasn't a Mrs. Scraggs on the face of the earth that couldn't 'a'
dandled her in her arms like a baby.

"'Is this the Reverend Silas Hardcrop?' says she.

"'Yes, madam,' says I, thinkin' it best to humor her, even if she
was small.

"'I wanted to meet you first--I wanted to say--to speak--there's
something I felt I must tell you,' she says.

"Thinks I: 'No, you don't. So long's I've got a gun in each hind
pocket I reckon the men folks and me will get long all right, but
private conversations with ladies is off the bill-of-fare.' So I
says: