If ye liked a girl ye
went an' sot up with her an' gin her a smack an' tol' her right out
plain an' square what ye wanted. An' thet settled it one way er t'
other. An' her mother she step' in the next room with the door
half-open an' never paid no 'tention. Recollec' one col'night when I
was sparkin' the mother hollered out o' bed, "Lucy, hev ye got
anythin 'round ye?" an' she hollered back, "Yis, mother," an' she
hed too but 'twan't nothin' but my arm.'
They laughed merrily, over the quaint reminiscence of my old
friend and the quainter way he had of telling it. The rude dialect of
the backwoodsman might have seemed oddly out of place, there,
but for the quiet, unassuming manner and the fine old face of
Uncle Eb in which the dullest eye might see the soul of a
gentleman.
'What became of Lucy?' Mr Fuller enquired, laughingly. 'You
never married her.'
'Lucy died,' he answered soberly; 'thet was long, long ago.'
Then he went away with John Trumbull to the smoking-room
where I found them, talking earnestly in a corner, when it was time
to go to the church with Hope.
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