sithed deep. I love company dearly, but--oh my soul, is there not a
difference, a difference in visitors?

Wall, suffice it to say, I sithed deep, and opened the other letter,
thinkin' it would kind o' take my mind off.

And for all the world! I couldn't hardly believe my eyes. But it wuz! It
wuz from Serena Fogg. It wuz from the Authoress of "Wedlock's Peaceful
Repose."

I hadn't heard a word from her for upwards of four years. And the letter
brung me startlin' intelligence.

It opened with the unexpected information that she wuz married. She had
been married three years and a half to a butcher out to the Ohio.

And I declare my first thought wuz as I read it, "Wall, she has wrote
dretful flowery on wedlock, and its perfect, onbroken calm, and peaceful
repose, and now she has had a realizin' sense of what it really is."

But when I read a little further, I see what the letter wuz writ for. I
see why, at this late day, she had started up and writ me a letter. I
see it wuz writ on duty.

She said she had found out that I wuz in the right on't and she wuzn't.
She said that when in the past she had disputed me right up and down,
and insisted that wedlock wuz a state of perfect serenity, never broken
in upon by any cares or vexations whatsomever, she wuz in the wrong
on't.