I'm 'fraid Kenelm didn't get any too
much joy out of his meals.
"And so everything was all right--'cordin' to Hannah's reckonin'--and it
might have stayed all right if she hadn't took that trip to Washington.
Etta Ellis was goin' on a three weeks' cut-rate excursion, and she
talked so much about it, that Hannah got reckless and fin'lly said she'd
go, too.
"The only thing that worried her was leavin' Kenelm. She hated to do it
dreadful, but he seemed tame enough and promised to change his flannels
if it got cold, and to feed the cat reg'lar, and to stay to home, and
one thing and another, so she thought 'twas safe to chance it. She
cooked up a lot of pie and frosted cake, and wrote out a kind of
time-table for him to eat and sleep by, and then cried and kissed him
good-by.
"The first three days after she was gone Kenelm stayed 'round the house
and turned in early. He was feelin' fine, but 'twas awful lonesome.
The fourth day, after breakfast, he had a cravin' to smoke. Told me
afterward it seemed to him as if he MUST smoke or die of the fidgets. At
last he couldn't stand it no longer, but turned Hannah's time-table to
the wall and went out for a walk. He walked and walked and walked. It
got 'most dinner time and he had an appetite that he hadn't had afore
for months.
"Just as he was turnin' into the road by the schoolhouse who should come
out on the piazza of the house on the corner but Abbie Larkin. She'd
left the door open, and the smell of dinner that blew through it was
tantalizin'.
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