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BUCK PARTING WITH MARY JANE. 245 |
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So I wrote : "I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was crying there, away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was mighty sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane."
It made my eyes water a little, to remember her crying there all by herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own roof, shaming her and robbing her ; and when I folded it up and give it to her, I see the water come into her eyes, too ; and she shook me by the hand, hard, and says :
" Good-bye—I'm going to do everything just as you've told me ; and if I don't ever see you again, I sha'n't ever forget you, and I'll think of you a many and a many a time, and I'll pray for you, too !"—and she was gone.
Pray for me ! I reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more nearer her size. But I bet she done-it, just the same—she was just that kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion—there warn't no backdown to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see ; in my opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain't no flattery. And when it comes to beauty—and goodness too—she lays over them all. I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door ; no, I hain't ever seen her since, but I reckon I've thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she would pray for me ; and if ever I'd a thought it would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I wouldn't a done it or bust.
Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see her go. When I struck Susan and the hare-lip, I says :
" What's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that you, all goes to see sometimes ? "
They says :
" There's several; but it's the Proctors, mainly."
" That's the name," I says ; " I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane she told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry—one of them's sick."
"Which one?"
" I don't know ; leastways I kinder forget; but I think it's------" |
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