34. CHAPTER XXXIV.
“HOW IT CAME OUT.”
WE are all children in reading stories. We
want more than all else to know how it
all came out at the end, and, if our taste is not
perverted, we like it to come out well. For my
part, ever since I began to write this story, I
have been anxious to know how it was going to come out.
Well, there were very few invited. It took place at ten in
the morning. The “preacher-in-charge” came, of course.
Miss Nancy Sawyer was there. But Ralph's uncle was away,
and Aunt Matilda had a sore throat and couldn't come. Perhaps
the memory of the fact that she had refused Mrs. Thomson,
the pauper, a bed for two nights, affected her throat. But
Miss Nancy and her sister were there, and the preacher. And
that was all, beside the family, and Bud and Martha. Of course
Bud and Martha came. And driving Martha to a wedding in
a “jumper” was the one opportunity Bud needed. His hands
were busy, his big boots were out of sight, and it was so easy
to slip from Ralph's love affair to his own, that Bud some
how, in pulling Martha Hawkins's shawl about her, stammered
out half a proposal, which Martha, generous soul, took for
the whole ceremony, and accepted. And Bud was so happy
that Ralph guessed from his face and voice that the agony
was over, and Bud was betrothed at last to the “gal as was
a gal.”
And after Ralph and Hannah were married—there was no
trip, Ralph only changed his boarding-place and became head
of the house at Mrs. Thomson's thereafter—after it was all
over, Bud came to Mr. Hartsook, and, snickering just a little,
said as how as him and Martha had fixed it all up, and now
they wanted to ax his advice; and Martha, proud but blushing,
came up and nodded assent. Bud said as how as he hadn't
got no book-larnin' nor nothin', and as how as he wanted to
be somethin', and put in his best licks fer Him, you know.
And that Marthy, she was of the same way of thinkin', and
that was a blessin'. And the Squire was a goin' to marry
agin', and Marthy would ruther vacate. And his mother and
Mirandy was sech as he wouldn't take no wife to. And he
thought as how Mr. Hartsook might think of some way or
some place where he and Marthy mout make a livin' fer the
present, and put in their best licks fer Him, you know.
Ralph thought a moment. He was about to make an allusion
to Hercules and the Augean stables, but he remembered that
Bud would not understand it, though it might remind Martha
of something she had seen at the East, the time she was to
Bosting.
“Bud, my dear friend,” said Ralph, “it looks a little hard
to ask you to take a new wife”—here Bud looked admiringly
at Martha—“to the poor-house. But I don't know anywhere
where you can do so much good for Christ as by taking charge
of that place, and I can get the appointment for you. The
new commissioners want just such a man.”
“What d'ye say, Marthy?” said Bud.
“Why, somebody ought to do for the poor, and I should
like to do it.”
And so Hercules cleaned the Augean stables.
And so my humble, homely Hoosier story of twenty years
ago draws to a close, and, not without regret, I take leave of
Ralph, and Hannah, and Shocky, and Bud, and Martha, and
Miss Nancy, and of my readers.
P. S.—A copy of the Lewisburg Jeffersonian came into my
hands to-day, and I see by its columns that Ralph Hartsook
is principal of the Lewisburg Academy. It took me
some time, however, to make out that the sheriff of the county,
Mr. Israel W. Means, was none other than my old friend Bud,
of the Church of the Best Licks. I was almost as much
puzzled over his name as I was when I saw an article in a
city paper, by Prof. W. J. Thomson, on Poor-Houses. I should
not have recognized the writer as Shocky, had I not known
that Shocky has given all his spare time to making outcasts
feel that God has not forgot. For, indeed, God never forgets.
But some of those to whom he intrusts his work do forget.
