I am very neighborly, and helpful, and am called so. Jonesville would
miss me if any thing should happen.

[Illustration: "SHE IS APT TO GET THINGS WRONG."]

I have often helped that woman a sight. She is a good, willin' creeter,
but she is apt to get things wrong, dretful apt. She made her little
boy's pantaloons once wrong side before, so it would seem that he would
have to set down from the front side, or else stand up.

And twice she got her husband's pantaloons sewed up so there wuz no way
to get into em' only to crawl up into 'em through the bottom of the
legs. But I have always made a practice of rippin' and tearin' and
bastin', and settin' her right, and I did now.

Wall, she hadn't hardly got out of the back door, when Josiah Allen came
in in awful distress, he had got a thorn in his foot, he had put on an
old pair of boots, and there wuz a hole in the side of one of 'em, and
the thorn had got in through the hole. It pained him dretfully, and he
wuz jest as crazy as a loon for the time bein'. And he hollered the
first thing that "he wanted some of Hall's salve." And I told him "there
wuzn't a mite in the house."

And he hollered up and says, "There would be some if there wuz any sense
in the head of the house."

[Illustration: "HE WANTED SOME OF HALL'S SALVE."]

I glanced up mechanically at his bald head, but didn't say nothin', for