FORE:"Don't be cross, Maria," pleaded Annabel. "I didn't know nothin' of it. You know I've been down to see the Robinses, and intended to stay till tomorrer, but something moved me to come home today, and I just happened to take this train. I really didn't know. Yet," and the instinctive rights of her womanhood and her future relations with Si asserted themselves to her own wonderment, "I had what the preachers call an inward promptin', which I felt it my dooty to obey, and I now think it came from God. You know I ought to be with Si as soon as anybody," and she hid her face in her hands in maidenly confusion.
THREE: mAriAr shE sEd did u EvEr No Ennything so Ridiklus."Whose head'll you knock off?" said a burly man, thrusting himself in front of the lawyer, with his fist doubled.
THREE:And this one seemed to learn more quickly than most. It grasped the idea of button-pushing before the end of the day, and Albin made a mental note to see if he could speed matters up, maybe by letting the Albert have a crack at actually doing the job on its own by day four or five instead of day six.He was none too soon, for there were getting to be thousands of very hungry men in Chattanooga who remembered the axiom about the early bird catching the worm, and thought the best time for "snatching" something was in the dark just before reveille. If they could find nothing better, and too often they did not, they would rob the mules of their scanty rations of corn, and soon a mule's feed-box had to be as carefully guarded as the commissary tent of the Headquarters mess.
THREE:"Indeed; I might say that I belong to that army myself. I'm going down that way, too. You see, my Congressman helped me get a contract for furnishing the Army o' the Cumberland with bridge timber, and I'm going down to Looeyville, and mebbe further, to see about it. We've just come from St. Louis, where I've bin deliverin' some timber in rafts."
