Samantha at Saratoga [98]
"Immensely, it wuz perfectly beautiful! So sort a free and soarin' like. It is jest what suits a man." "You'd better go right over it agin," sez I. "Yes," sez the man who runs the cars. "You'd better go agin." "Oh no," sez Josiah. "Why not?" sez I. "Why not?" sez the man. Josiah Allen looked all around the room, and down on the grass, as if trying to find a good reasonable excuse a layin' round loose somewhere, so's he could get holt of it. "You'd better go," sez I, "I love to see you happy, Josiah Allen." "Yes, you'd better go," sez the man. "No!" sez Josiah, still a lookin' round for a excuse, up into the heavens and onto the horizon. And at last his face kinder brightenin' up, as if he had found one: "No, it looks so kinder cloudy, I guess I won't go. I think we shall have rain between now and night." And so we said no more on the subject and sot out homewards. Ardelia wrote a poem on the occasion, wrote it right there, with rapidity and a lead pencil, and handed it to me, before I left the room. I put it into my pocket and didn't think on it, for some days afterwards. That night after we got home from the Roller Coaster, I felt dretful sort a down hearted about Abram Gee, I see in that little incident of the day, that Bial, although I couldn't like him, yet I see he had his good qualities, I see how truthful he wuz. And although I love truth -- I fairly worship it -- yet I felt that if things wuz as he said they wuz, he would more'n probable get Ardelia Tutt, for I know the power of Ambition in her, and I felt that she would risk the chances of happiness, for the name of bein' a Banker's Bride. So I sat there in deep gloom, and a chocolate colored wrapper, till as late as half past nine o'clock P. M. And I felt that the course of Abram's love wuz not runnin' smooth. No, I felt that it wuz runnin' in a dwindlin' torrent over a rocky bed, and a precipitus one. And I felt that if he wuz with me then and there, if we didn't mingle our tears together we could our sithes, for I sithed, powerful and frequent. Poor short-sighted creeter that I wuz, a settin' in the shadow, when the sun wuz jest a gettin' ready to shine out onto Abram and reflect off onto my envious heart. Even at that very time the hand of righteous Retribution had slipped its sure noose over Bial Flamburg's neck, and wuz a walkin' him away from Ardelia, away from happiness (oritory). At that very hour, half past nine P. M., Ardelia Tutt and Abram Gee had met agin, and rosy love and happiness wuz even then a stringin' roses on the chain that wuz to bind 'em together forever. The way on't wuz: It bein' early when Ardelia got here, Bial proposed to take her out for a drive and she consented. He got a livery horse, and buggy, and they say that the livery man knew jest what sort of a creeter the horse wuz, and knew it wuz liable to break the buggy all to pieces and them to, and he let 'em have it for goin.' But howsumever, whether that is so or not, when they got about five or six milds from Saratoga the horse skeert out of the road, and throwed 'em both out. It wuz a bank of sand that skeert it, a high bank that wuz piled up by a little hovel that stood by the side of the road. The ground all round the hut wuz too poor to raise anything else but sand, and had raised sights of that. A man and woman, dretful shabby lookin', wuz a standin' by the door of the hut, and the man had a shovel in his hand, and had been a loadin' sand into a awful big wheelbarrow that wuz a standin' by -- seemin'ly ready to carry it acrost the fields, to where some man wuz a mixin' some motar, to lay the foundations of a barn. Wall, the old man stood a pantin' by the side of the wheelbarrow, as if he had indeed got on too heavy a load. It wuz piled up high. The horse shied, and Ardelia wuz throwed right out onto the bank of sand, Bial by the side of her. And the old man and woman came a runnin' up, and callin' out, "Bial, my son, my son, are you wounded?" And there it all wuz. Ardelia see the hull on it. The Banker wuz before her, and she wuz a layin' on the bank. And