130 TROTTYS WEDDING TOUR.

Aunt John can’t afford chicken unless it’s Sundays, be-
cause her chickens are ’most all guinea-hens and one turkey.
But I’d rather go to Aunt John’s than anywhere else in this
world. When I was a little fellow I used to think I’d rather
go to Aunt John’s than to go to heaven. But I never dared to
tell. But when I had the scarlet-fever down there, I let it
out some way to Aunt John, and she never scolded a bit. I
thought she cried, but I never was sure, because she was
just digging out the guava-jelly with a teaspoon.

You could n’t tell what it 7s about going to Aunt John’s.
It isn’t so much the maple-syrup. Nor the four-o’clock
dinner Sundays, and the crisp on the mashed potato. I don’t
think it’s the barn nor the tool-house; it is n’t adi the old
carryall out under the butternut-tree; Aunt John leaves that
carryall there yet, though it’s just a smash from the wind
and weather and us boys, because Jill says he ’d feel home-
sick not to see it; and she could n’t even play go for the doc-
tor in it, it’s such a smash.

Aunt John takes photographs and tintypes. Most boys
think it’s funny for a lady to take tintypes, but Jill and I
don’t. She always has. At least, uncle did, and she helped,
and so he died, and she kept right along. She has a saloon
next the post-office, and her girl gets dinner, and she comes
home at twelve, to sit round in the shady places on the steps
with Jill and me, and guess what we are going to have for
dessert.

I don’t know but it ’s the saloon that’s a good deal of it at