Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/177

Rh "What on earth are we to do for a girl?" cried Euphemia.

"You're to have me till you can get another one," said Pomona, quietly. "I hope you don't think I'd go 'way and leave you without anybody."

"But a wife ought to go to her husband," said Euphemia, "especially so recent a bride. Why didn't you let me know all about it? I would have helped to fit you out. We would have given you the nicest kind of a little wedding."

"I know that," said Pomona; "you're jus' good enough. But I didn't want to put you to all that trouble—right in preserving-time, too. An' he wanted it quiet, for he's awful backward about shows. An' as I'm to go to live with his folks—at least in a little house on the farm—I might as well stay here as anywhere, even if I didn't want to, for I can't go there till after frost."

"Why not?" I asked.

"The chills and fever," said she. "They have it awful down in that valley. Why, he had a chill while we was bein' married, right at the bridal altar."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Euphemia. "How dreadful!"

"Yes, indeed," said Pomona. "He must 'a' forgot it was his chill-day, and he didn't take his quinine, and so it come on him jus' as he was a-promisin' to love an' perfect. But he stuck it out, at the minister's house, and walked home by hisself to finish his chill."

"And you didn't go with him?" cried Euphemia indignantly.

"He said no. It was better thus. He felt it weren't the right thing to mingle the agur with his marriage vows. He promised to take sixteen grains