But I'll bet that half or three quarters of that low melancholy groan of
her'n wuz caused by the hardness of the job that loomed up in front of
us, and the hull of mine wuz.

Wall, that night Josiah Allen wuz a-feelin' dretful neat, fer he had
sold our sorell colt for a awful big price.

It wuz a good colt; its mother wuz took sick when it wuz a few days old,
and we had brung it up as a corset, or ruther I did, fer Josiah Allen
at that time had the rheumatiz to that extent that he couldn't step his
foot on the floor for months, so the care of the corset come on me, most
the hull on it, till it got big enough to run out in the lot and git its
own livin'.

Night after night I used to get up and warm milk for it, when it wuz
very small, for it wuz weakly, and we didn't know as we could winter it.

[Illustration: "I WOULD MEANDER OUT THERE IN A ICY NIGHT TO FEED IT."]

We kep it in a little warm shed offen the wood house for quite a spell,
but still I used to find it considerable cold when I would meander out
there in a icy night to feed it. But jest as it is always the way with
wimmen, the more care I took on it, the more it needed me and depended
on me, the better I liked it.

Till I got to likin' it so well that it wuzn't half so hard a job for me
to go out to feed it in the night as it would have been to laid still in
my warm bed and think mebby it wuz cold and hungry.

So I would pike out and feed it two or three times a night.