better make a summer trip to Saratoga. I never told Ardelia what
I had done, but trusted to a overrulin' destiny, that seems to
enrap babys, and lunatiks, and soft little wimmen, when their
heads get kinder turned by a man, and to Abram's honest face when
she should compare it with Bial Flamburg's, and to Abram's pure,
sweet breath with that mixture of stale cigars, tobacco, beer, and
peppermint.

But Abram wrote back to me that his mother wuz a lyin' at the
p'int of death with a fever - that his sister Susan wuz sick a bed
with the same fever and couldn't come a nigh her and he couldn't
leave what might be his mother's death-bed. And he sez, if
Ardelia had forgot him in so short a time, mebby it wuz the best
thing he could do, to try and forget her. Anyway, he wouldn't
leave his dying mother for anything or anybody.

That wuz Abram Gee all over, a doin' his duty every time by bread
and humanity. But he added a postscript and it wuz wrote in a
agitated hand - that jest as soon as his mother got so he could
leave her, he should come to Saratoga.




IX.

JOSIAH 'S FLIRTATIONS.


They say there is a sight of flirtin' done at Saratoga. I didn't