to set down and bear it. Such is some of the trials of pardners?

Wall, it kep' agoin' on, and a goin' on, and I kep' a hatin' to
see it, for if anybody has got to flirt, which I am far from
approvin' of, but if I have got to see it a goin' on, I would fain
see it well done, and Josiah's efforts to flirt wuz like an effort
of our old mair to play a tune on the melodian, no grace in it, no
system, nor comfort to him, nor me.

I s'pose the girl got some fun out of it; I hope she did, for if
she didn't it wuz a wearisome job all round.

Wall, a week or so rolled on, and it wuz still in progress. And
one day an old friend of ours, Miss Ezra Balch, from the east part
of Jonesville, come to see me. She come to Saratoga for the
rheumatiz, and wuz gettin' well fast, and Ezra was gettin' entirely
cured of biles, for which he had come, carbunkles.

Wall, she invited Josiah and me to take a ride with 'em, and we
both accepted of it, and at the appointed time I wuz ready to the
minute, down on the piazza, with my brown cotton gloves on, and my
mantilly hung gracefully over my arm. But at the last minute,
Josiah Allen said "he couldn't go."

I says "Why can't you go?"

"Oh," he says, kinder drawin' up his collar, and smoothin' down
his vest, "Oh, I have got another engagement."

He looked real high-headed, and I says to him: