"I should think he needn't make any excuses for that," remarked
Grandma Padgett, smiling.
J. D. sawed back and forth on a log, his silly face rosy with
pleasure over the tale of his own woes:
O, I went to a friend's house,
The friend says "Come in.
Take a hot cup of coffee,
O where have you been?"
It's down to the Squi-er's
With a license I went,
And my good Sunday clothes on,
To marry intent.
"O where is the lady?"
The good Squi-er, says he.
"O she's gone with a wed'wer
That is not poor J. D."
"It's now you surprise me,"
The friend says a-sigh'n,
"J. D. Matthews not married,
The sun will not shine!"
"Well, I think she was simple!" exclaimed aunt Corinne in epilogue,
"when she might have had a man that washed the dishes and talked
poetry all the time."
CHAPTER XVII.
THE HOUSE WITH LOG STEPS.
Richmond must soon have seemed far behind Grandma Padgett's little
caravan, had not Fairy Carrie still drowsed in the carriage, keeping
the Richmond adventures always present.
They had parted from J. D. Matthews and the Virginian and his troop.
Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen were somewhere on the road ahead, but at a
point unknown to Robert and Corinne.
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