Set her place at hearth and board
As it used to be!
These were the last words that crossed his waking thoughts. Before Louisa went
to her own bed, she wrote one of her brief and characteristic epistles to
Susanna, but it did not reach her, for the "hills of home" had called John's
wife so insistently on that Sunday, that the next day found her on her way
back to Farnham.
Dear Susanna [so the letter read], There's a new man in your house at Farnham.
His name is John Hathaway, but he's made all over and it was high time. I say
it's the hand of God! He won't own up that it is, but I'm letting him alone,
for I've done quarreling, though I don't like to see a man get religion and
deny it, for all the world like Peter in the New Testament. If you have n't
used up the last one of your seventy-times-sevens, I think you'd better come
back and forgive your husband. If you don't, you'd better send for your son.
I'm willing to bear the burdens the Lord intends specially for me, but Jack
belongs to you, and a good-sized heavy burden he is, too, for his age. I can't
deny that, if he is a Hathaway. I think he's the kind of a boy that ought to
be put in a barrel and fed through the bunghole till he grows up; but of
course I'm not used to children's ways.
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