Young Dr. Phillip Rhodes wuz a prime favorite of mine, and had always been. He had as much goodness and common sense and smartness about him as any young man I ever set eyes on. He wuz good lookin’, too, with keen, dark eyes, kinder laughin’ and kinder sad eyes, too, as if he see naterally on both sides of life—the bright side and pathetic side. Tall, broad shouldered, manly lookin’, he wuz, as nigh as I could make out from what I’d hearn, as near the opposite of Dora’s bo as you could find.
Well, young Dr. Phillip took her little slender white wrist in his hand and counted her heart beats by his watch, and mebby he counted ’em by his own heart, too, for Dora did look sweet as a picter as she lay there with her golden hair all kinder curly round her pale face and her big violet-blue eyes, and the waves of white lace about her neck comin’ up round her soft cheeks that wuz jest about as white.
Well, he left her some powders and some tablets and said he would come agin the next day. And she lifted her soft, sad blue eyes to hisen and looked so confidin’ and innocent and sweet at him that I didn’t wonder it took him such a long time to fold up the powders and why he seemed to linger round as if he wuz loth to go.
But at last he did go downstairs, and I follered him, and he turned round in the settin’ room and faced me, and in a honest way that would be invaluable in a doctor if follered up, he sez:
“What is really the matter with her, Aunt Samantha?”
And I sez, “A lack of common sense in her mother, or that is what started the trouble in the first place.” Sez I in a sort of a blind way, “There is mebby other complications now that will have to be tended to.”
And I walked off into the buttery. I wuzn’t goin’ to mention Le Flam to him, no, indeed! and when I come out I brung a plate of cream cookies; he likes my cookies to a extraordinary degree, and these wuz jest out of the oven, and he eat three, and then went away with one in his hand. He appreciates good cookin’, yes, indeed!
Well, the next mornin’ bright and early young Dr. Phillip wuz there agin with a pink rose in his buttonhole (I never see that before), and he made a long call, and so the next day, and the next, and the next, and she a-gainin’ all the while and beginnin’ to talk real bright and chipper to him, and the seventh young Dr. Phillip said it would help her to ride out that very day, for the air wuz jest exactly right.
And I sez, “Well, I don’t know what I can do, for Josiah is away with both horses.”
And he sez dreamily, “Yes, I met him, but,” sez he, “as it happens I took my low, easy phaeton this afternoon, and I can take her for a short ride as well as not.”
And I sez, “Won’t to-morrow do?”
And he sez, “No, for to-day the air is jest exactly right.”
And I, not wantin’ to hurt her, fell in with the idee, and I see she wanted to go.
Now, if I hadn’t trusted him jest as firm as I would any old deacon or pastor I wouldn’t hearn to the idee, but I did trust him implicitly, and so I agreed to it.
And when he brung her back, she with a pretty light in her eyes and a soft color on the white cheeks, he sez:
“As it happens I have got to go up the mountain in the morning a few miles, and I will take Miss Dora out again if you think best.”
And I sez, “Josiah can take her.”
And he sez, “No, Uncle Josiah is busy; don’t bother him.”
“Well,” sez I, kinder laughin’ in the inside of my sleeves, “doctors are most always busy.”
And he sez again, “I have got to go up there, and mountain air is jest what she needs.”
Well, in a few days he said she needed lake air. And when I begun to plan how to git her to it he said it happened jest so that he had got to go down on the lake shore a few milds off, and he could take her jest as well as not, and she seemed glad to go—glad enough; and every single day she seemed to feel better and look better. Early hours to bed and to rise, fresh, pure air, wholesome, nutritious food, and easy, loose clothin’ had all done their healin’ work on her. Why, I had let out her pretty muslin dresses most half a finger under the arms, and she dast as well die as to girt herself in agin, my eye wuz that keen on her and yet lovin’. And I went to Jonesville myself and picked her out a pair of common sense shoes, but pretty ones, russet color; why, good land! she didn’t wear but number three, anyway—they wuz plenty big enough, and I admitted it. And I spoze her freedom from foot sufferin’ helped her a great sight, and her winder wuz always open nights. She had got to likin’ me too well to not do as I said, and when she see me calmly carryin’ the pickle jar down suller and put a stun on it, she knew that ended pickles; and when she asked Josiah to git her some candy and I calmly took it and eat it up myself, makin’ me dead sick, but doin’ it cheerful in a martyr way, she didn’t ask him agin to git her anything sarahuptishously, and it wuzn’t long before her well stomach didn’t crave such trash—rich cake and pickles and pies and such. And she begun to git so plump that she laughed and said I would have to let out her dresses agin.
And I did before she went home—more than a inch on both sides—and her cheeks got pinker and her eyes got brighter and brighter, and I didn’t wonder a mite that the kinds of air she had to ride out to take wuz so various and lay in such different directions, and young Dr. Phillip wuz so willin’ to take her to ’em.
Well, Dora had wanted to surprise her mother when she come to see her so much better, so we hadn’t said nothin’ in our letters about the great improvement and change in her, and the very day that Dr. Phillip and she went out on a two milds walk, two out and two in, I got a letter from Albina Ann sayin’ she had seen a new kind of invalid chair and askin’ me to ask the doctor if he thought it would be a benefit to Dora, and sez she:
“Your evasive remarks about my poor dear invalid makes me fear that I shall never see her agin, and,” sez she, “I drempt last night of attendin’ a funeral, and I lay for more than an hour planning the funeral when she is took from me, I picked out the text ‘Strange are the mysterious ways of Providence,’ and,” sez she, “I wet two handkerchiefs wet as sop with my tears right there in the middle of the night.”
Oh, Albina Ann thought enough of her, I could see that, and kep’ her in her mind day and night. And the day I let her dress out for the second time, that wuz the time she went out with her Uncle Josiah to help rake the meadow and come in laughin’ and rosy on top of the load jest as Dr. Phillip drove into the yard, makin’ her face look rosier than ever.
Well, that day Albina Ann writ to me agin, and sez she, “I write to you, for I know that Dora is too feeble to write to me, and I want you to tell me, and tell me plain, if you think she is going to live until fall, for I must, if she is in immediate danger, I must leave Henry and his wife and the twins, sick as they be, for I must, I must see my darling, my idol! once more.”
Well, I writ her a sort of a comfortin’ letter, that would settle her mind some and stiddy it; all the while I wuz writin’ I wuz hearin’ Dora’s ringin’ laugh out in the front yard, where Dr. Phillip and she stood a-talkin’ and laughin’ with my companion.
Well, Dr. Phillip wuz here about every day, and it wuz plain enough to see what wuz in his mind; he had never paid any attention to a girl before in his life as I ever hearn on, and if I wuz any judge of girls (and I fancy I am a splendid judge) Dora wuz jest as fond of him as he wuz of her. Le Flam, that poor dissipated chap, I felt had only stood in the vestibule of her fancy, but Dr. Phillip I believed had opened the door to her heart and walked in there to stay.
Well, I felt that all I had to do wuz to set down and trust the Lord; that’s all we can do after we’ve done all we can do ourselves. Let mothers take this great truth into consideration and consider on it; surround your young girls with good society, and when I say good I don’t mean necessarily rich, but good, honest, and reliable, then you can set down in your chair and rest, knowin’ that whatever is the Lord’s will to happen won’t bring grief and shame to your heart. If it is His will to have your girl a bachelor maid, thank God and take courage, if it is His will to have her unite her fate to a companion, why accept it as His will and make the best on’t, but ’tennyrate and anyway, don’t, don’t let her marry a shack, and to insure that don’t let a shack come hangin’ round.
Well, everything seemed to be goin’ as I wanted it to go. Considerin’ the Le Flam eppisode, I couldn’t act exactly as I would if I had took her fresh from the cradle. In them latter circumstances I would impress agin and agin on a girl’s mind how many avenoos there wuz to walk in besides the matrimonial one—broad, glorious avenoos full of helpful and grand possibilities. But the Le Flam eppisode had hampered me, and so, as I say, everything seemed to be goin’ as I wanted it to. And yet anon or oftener I had a feelin’ that if Dora couldn’t be broke for good of her foolish ways—foolishness nurtured and fostered by Albina Ann—I didn’t want Dr. Phillip’s life spilte. And then agin a good deal of the time I noticed her sweet disposition and put a long white mark on that; her readiness to fall into better ways, when she found ’em out—another long white mark.
As for his likin’ for her, I felt that I needn’t mark that, for he had done it himself. And if she didn’t know as much as Sappho or Aspasia, that I’ve hearn Thomas J. read about, I knew men never cared any too much about that, and as for Miss Sappho and Miss Aspasia, I never thought any too much of either on ’em, from what I’d hearn; Miss Sappho, with all her smartness, drownded herself; and as for Miss Aspasia, there is sights of talk about her and always wuz.
And then I felt a good deal of the time that Dr. Phillip had smartness enough for ’em both, and Dora wuz nobody’s fool, and I felt that the sun of his strength and love would bring out the colors in her mind and soul jest as the sunlight changes a poor suller kep’ house-plant in the spring of the year.
Well, anyway and ’tennyrate, I had to let it go on. I jest had to, for the stream wuz gittin’ too deep for me to ford or dam (metafor), I meant the stream of deep, pure love that wuz a-flowin’ round Dora and bearin’ her on its deep bosom into happiness, as I trusted and felt, I felt it had got to bear her where it wanted to.
Well, one day Dora and Dr. Phillip had gone up the mountain road, the air wuz balmy as if it blowed off a bed of balm, and I had seen the happy pair set off under the mornin’ sun lookin’ fresh and bright almost as that luminary itself, only of course not so dazzlin’.
And my Josiah had gone into the wood lot after a load of stove wood, and I’d put on a clean gingham dress and sot there in my clean kitchen alone in all my glory, same as Solomon did, or the Queen of Sheba, I’ve most forgot which one on ’em it wuz, when I hearn a rap on the door and I went and opened it, and there stood a chap that I knew by the first look on him wuz Le Flam. He had that same look on him, sort o’ dissipated and yet kinder stylish and handsome, that I felt certain could belong to no other.
I invited him in and sot him a chair, for I felt that he wuz a-goin’ to have a bad enough time without standin’ up, and he sez most the first thing:
“I want to see my affianced.”
And I sez, “Nobody by that name is here or been here.”
Sez he, “My betrothed.”
And then I sez, “I don’t somehow seem to recognize the name.”
And he yelled up a little, “The girl I’m engaged to, Miss Dora Peak; or that is,” sez he, “I’ve considered it the same as an engagement, though perhaps it hasn’t quite reached that point.”
“Oh,” sez I, “you mean Dora; well, she is not here jest now.”
“And,” he sez, his red face growin’ redder and his kinder bloodshot eyes dartin’ angry gleams, “I have heard all about your treacherous conduct, and I’ve come to settle with you.”
“You have, have you!” sez I, and I turned over the sock I wuz a-mendin’ and attackted it in a new place.
“Yes,” sez he, “I’ve heard how you have encouraged the attentions of another man to the girl I wuz as good as engaged to, the girl I have paid attention to for years.”
Sez I calmly, a-lookin’ him over as if he wuz a banty rooster, “Have you paid attention to her exclusively?”
“I have never paid attention to another lady!” he yelled in quite a loud voice and shrill.
“Mebby not,” sez I, and I went on, “Dora can do as she pleases, but if I wuz a young girl,” sez I, “I wouldn’t accept the attentions of a man who divided his attentions between me and saloons, gamblin’ halls and horse races,” sez I.
“What do you mean?” he yelled out.
“Jest what I say,” sez I, a-gittin’ up and puttin’ in another stick of wood and a-seatin’ myself some nigher the wood-box, for I didn’t know what he might be led to do, for I could see as plain as anything that he wuzn’t quite himself, and you never can calculate what such a man may take it into his head to do. But I felt considerable easy when I had a good stout birch stick of wood right at hand, not that I wuz really ’fraid on him: dissipation had told on him so he looked considerable tottlin’ and shaky under all the outside veneer of fashion he’d put on; but how can you tell what a poor, miserable tike will take into his head? Why, dissipation jest onhinges all the moral and spiritual graces, all the manliness and self-respect and will-power, and jest lets ’em all tottle down into ruin, and I don’t believe he had many graces to onjint in the first place.
“What do you mean?” sez he, lookin’ meachin’, meachin’ as a dog.
“Why,” sez I, a-feelin’ it my bounden duty to stand between Dora and trouble, “I mean that it is a shame and a disgrace for such a man as you are to even talk of takin’ a sweet, innocent young girl into a life like yours.”
“She fills my heart,” sez he, “and my life, and has for years.”
“Not full!” sez I, lookin’ at him keenly, “not full! If she did her sweet image would have banished the other vile inmates that have abounded there—wicked companions, evil ways of all kinds. What room is there in that black crew for an innocent young life like Dora’s? Have you got the heart,” sez I, “to try to entice that young girl into such a life as you know the wife of a dissipated man must lead—into woe and wretchedness, and an early grave, most likely?”
“I would reform,” sez he; “I would become a different man for her sake.”
“Why haven’t you, then?” sez I. “Why haven’t you reformed in all these years when you wuz on probation, as you may say, a-tryin’ to win her love? Do you think that you’d do better when you wuz sure of her and she wuz in your power? Now,” sez I, “I don’t want to be hash to you, and I don’t want to hender you from singin’ that
‘While the lamp holds out to burn
The vilest sinner may return,’
but I don’t want you to sing it here; I want you to go away and let Dora alone.”
“I never will,” sez he.
“Well,” sez I, “I will see about that;” and I got up and went to the back door and called out loud: “Josiah, I want you and Ury to come right here!”
Well, my conscience has twitted me about that performance more’n a hundred times sence, if it has once. But, then, I would kinder argy back, when I would git all wore out with that conscience a-proddin’ me, I did want Josiah to come that very minute, and I would have liked to see Ury step in, there hain’t a doubt on’t. And what of it, what if Ury wuz to Three Mile Bay for a load of spruce; and what if Josiah Allen wuz two milds and a half away in our wood-lot, I wanted ’em, there hain’t a doubt of that, and I didn’t lie.
And I spoze I might jest as well tell it right here as anywhere, Josiah has told it more than twenty times in one day by the clock: he sez, and I believe it implicitly, he had jest driv into the woods and had commenced to load the wood in when he sez he hearn me say: “Josiah, I want you.” And he sez there wuz in my voice a certain ring of urgent need and anxiety that made him turn the team right round and come home on the gallop, and consequently he met Le Flam down by the big butnut tree. For after I called to them men, for all the world jest as if they wuz inside the barn door, Le Flam turned on to his heel and went off without biddin’ me “good-by,” or “good-day,” or anythin’. He yanked the lines offen the post (he had hitched by the lines—didn’t know any more—and I spoze he broke sunthin’, somehow, for he seemed to be foolin’ round with the harness for quite a spell; I spoze his hands wuz clumsy and helpless owin’ to his state), and so, as I say, Josiah come a-gallopin’ ’long, and past him down by the butnut tree.
Well, to me that little eppisode always went to show how close the ties be unitin’ two true hearts, and how queer and curious the atmosphere is that surrounds ’em. My voice in need reached the ear that Love had attuned to hear it. Strange, strange is the mysteries of pardners. I’ve always said it and I always will: strange is the pathway on which their sperits can go back and forth and meet each other. It made me feel queer and riz up.
But Josiah looks at it different; he thinks that it wuz my nateral voice that he hearn, and sez he: “Samantha, I always told you that I could hear you two or three milds away, and now I’ve proved it: your voice is shrill,” sez he, “and you don’t realize how loud you holler.”
“Why didn’t Ury hear me?” sez I scornfully.
“Oh, there is a limit to the shrillest voice. You couldn’t expect to talk back and forth with folks clear to the Klondyke.”
Well, there wuzn’t no use argyin’, and he has throwed that eppisode in my face ever sence, and I spoze he always will.
But good land, I don’t care; I know that we got rid of Le Flam for good and all, for he didn’t make much of any move after that eppisode of advice and warnin’ to him. I guess he did write to Dora once or twice, but she never noticed his letters, and it wuzn’t but a few months before he married a rich widder.
Well, it wuz on a bright September day that Albina Ann come to Jonesville, after Dora had had only three months, mind you, of common-sense treatment and reasonable livin’, and I wish that you could have seen her face as it rested on Dora’s for the first time. You see, she come in dretful pimpin’ and pensive lookin’, for Henry’s wife had had a siege and Albina Ann had nursed her faithfully, and Henry, too, and the twins, and they wuz all a-pullin’ through.
But bad and wore out as Albina Ann felt, she didn’t feel too bad to have that white dotted veil over her made-up face, and her dress tight as tight could be, and sot up on wobblin’ heels half a finger from the ground a-pitchin’ her kinder forwards. I pitied her. And her first words was, “She is alive, hain’t she? Do tell me so! Is she in the spare bedroom? Oh,” sez she, “to come from one bed of sickness to another!” and she sithed and kinder groaned, and started for the chamber stairs.
Sez I, “She has gone out for a ride.”
“For a ride!” sez she in amaze, “then she can’t be in immediate danger,” and then she sez, “Oh, how I have dreaded to come from the almost dying bed of my dear ones in Denver to the sick bed of another.”
“Well,” sez I, “Dora hain’t bed-sick,” and, sez I, “you’ll see her in a minute, for I hearn ’em at the gate.”
Well, when that plump, rosy-cheeked girl, with sparkling, laughing eyes, bounded into the room (her Uncle Josiah had told her that her Ma had come) and threw her arms round her neck and kissed her, you could have knocked Albina Ann over with a pin-feather. I felt conscience-struck, and as if I’d ort to told her. Her face turned ghastly pale under the false color, and she looked at Dora and then at me in a stunted, dumfoundered, helpless way, pitiful in the extreme, that most made me ’fraid that she had lost her faculty. But pretty soon she gradually brightened up into a happy, blissful look, and her nateral color returned, and how she did hug and embrace Dora, and she sez to me in a solemn way, “It is a mericle, Samantha!”
“No,” sez I, “no mericle, only a triumph of common sense and common-sense remedies—pure air, early hours, wholesome food, etc., etc.”
And then she noticed her dress, I see—the absence of cosset, the common-sense shoes. But she never lisped a word aginst it, and hain’t to this day, so fur as I know. The shock had been too great: she had seen the dead raised to life, as it were, and it had shook a little common sense and gumption into her. I ketched her myself the next mornin’ a-lettin’ out her travelin’ dress, and she let her cosset out some. I have some hopes of her.
Well, to resoom backwards a spell. Dr. Phillip come in with my pardner, and when Albina Ann see that splendid, noble lookin’ young man, and comprehended how and what it wuz, and that Le Flam wuz only a dark shadder in the past and wouldn’t shade Dora’s future agin, agin she sez to me in them solemn axents out on the back stoop, “Another mericle, Samantha?”
And I sez, “No such thing, Albina Ann; nothing only another triumph of common sense. Do you remember what I said to you about surroundin’ young girls with good society?” And I felt so well that I went on and eppisoded a little right there.
Sez I, “When you let a cat into a cream-dairy what do you expect, or a dog into a bone factory? Will the cat pay any attention to the catechism, or the dog to the doxology? No; you can’t expect them to change their naters all of a sudden. So with young folks: throw young hearts together in the springtime with no warnin’; what is the result? Why, the trees and flowers and everything bloom out under the sun of spring, and young hearts stand ready to blossom out under the sun of love, and you ort to be careful, careful as to the material you surround ’em with.”
But I see she wuzn’t payin’ the attention she ort to, and agin I see her look at Dr. Phillip proudly and happily, and she murmured agin, “It is a mericle, a mericle!”
And I sez agin, bein’ brung down from the mount of eloquence on to the plain of common sense, “It hain’t no such thing: it is nothin’ but siftin’ good wheat from bad and usin’ a little plain horse sense.”
Well, Albina Ann wuz always contrary; she’s never gin in, nor I nuther. She always to this day contends that it wuz a mericle, and sez she gives Providence all the praise for the hull performance, which of course I want her to do, and still——
Well, if I hadn’t acted out what I believed wuz the will of Providence she would have come out pretty slim.
Dora and Dr. Phillip wuz married ’long the next winter, and I went to the weddin’, proud as a peacock of the bright, healthy, happy looks of the bride—sweet as a rose, too, she looked under her white veil. And they have settled down in Loontown, in a pretty cream-colored cottage nigh the old doctor’s. And everybody sez they are the very happiest couple in Loontown.
She knows enough! And he jest worships her, and she him, and they both set store by me, sights of store.