His memory was nursed up now, and my only chance was to keep it so.

Therefore I begged him to please to go on, and no more would I interrupt him.

And I longed to be ten years older, so as not to speak when needless.
"So then, Miss Erma, if I must go on," resumed the well-coaxed Stixon, "if my duty to the family driveth me to an 'arrowing subjeck, no words can more justly tell what come to pass than my language to my wife.

She were alive then, the poor dear hangel, and the mother of seven children, which made me, by your leave comparing humble roofs with grandeur, a little stiff to him up stairs, as come in on the top of seven.

For I said to my wife when I went home--sleeping out of the house, you see, miss, till the Lord was pleased to dissolve matrimony--'Polly,' I said, when I took home my supper, 'you may take my word for it there is something queer.' Not another word did I mean to tell her, as behooved my dooty.