number, and I got real attached to her and visey versey. And
when she came a visitin' me in the spring (at my request), and I
happened to mention that Josiah and me laid out to go to Saratoga
for the summer, what did the soft little creeter want to do but
to go too. Her father was well off and wuz able to send her, and
she had relatives there on her own side, some of the Pixleys, so
her board wouldn't cost nothin'. So it didn't look nothin'
unreasonable, though whether I could get her there and back
without her mashin' all down on my hands, like a over ripe peach,
she wuz that soft, wuz a question that hanted me, and so I told
Josiah.

But Josiah kinder likes young girls (nothin' light; a calm
meetin'-house affection), it is kinder nater that he should, and
he sez: "Better let her go, she won't make much trouble."

"No," sez I, "not to you, but if you had to set for hours and
hours and hear her verses read to you on every subject -- on
heaven, and earth, and the seas, and see her a measurin' of it
with a stick to get the lines the right length; if you had to go
through all this, mebby you would meditate on the subject before
you took it for a summer's job."

" Wall," sez he, "mebby she won't write so much when she gets
started; she will be kinder jogged round and stirred up in body
and mebby her feelins' will kinder rest. I shouldn't wonder a
mite if they did," sez he. "And then she can take a good many
steps for you, and I love to see you favored," sez he.

He wanted her to go, I see that, and I see that it wuz natur that