"I've hunted high and I've hunted low, and it
does beat all what has become of your other shirt."

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers
and things, and a hard piece of corn-crust started
down my throat after it and got met on the road
with a cough, and was shot across the table, and
took one of the children in the eye and curled him
up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the
size of a war-whoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue
around the gills, and it all amounted to a consider-
able state of things for about a quarter of a minute
or as much as that, and I would 'a' sold out for half
price if there was a bidder. But after that we was
all right again--it was the sudden surprise of it that
knocked us so kind of cold. Uncle Silas he says:

"It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand
it. I know perfectly well I took it off, because--"

"Because you hain't got but one on. Just listen
at the man! I know you took it off, and know it by
a better way than your wool-gethering memory, too,
because it was on the clo's-line yesterday--I see it
there myself. But it's gone, that's the long and the
short of it, and you'll just have to change to a red
flann'l one till I can get time to make a new one.
And it 'll be the third I've made in two years. It
just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts:
and whatever you do manage to do with 'm all is
more'n I can make out. A body'd think you would
learn to take some sort of care of 'em at your time
of life."

"I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it
oughtn't to be altogether my fault, because, you

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