"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,
besides 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
somehow, 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[29] 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 his spare time
to making outcasts feel that God has not forgot.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 29: Written in 1871.]
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Hoosier Schoolmaster, by Edward Eggleston