'Are you interested in the case?'
"'I should think I was,' said I, an' then I told him about Jone's
bein' a juryman, an' how we was on our bridal-trip.
"'You've got my sympathy, madam,' says he, 'but it's a difficult
case to decide, an' I don't wonder it takes a good while.'
"'Nor I nuther,' says I, 'an' my opinion about these things is,
that if you'd jus' have them lawyers shut up in another room, an'
make 'em do their talkin' to theirselves, the jury could keep their
minds clear, and settle the cases in no time.'
"'There's some sense in that, madam,' says he, an' then he went
into court ag'in.
"Jone never had no chance to jine in with the other fellers, for
they couldn't agree, an' they were all discharged, at last. So the
whole thing went for nuthin.
"When Jone come out, he looked like he'd been drawn through a pump-
log, an' he says to me, tired-like,
"'Has there been a frost?'
"'Yes,' says I, 'two of 'em.'
"'All right, then,' says he. 'I've had enough of bridal-trips,
with their dry falls, their lunatic asylums, and their jury-boxes.
Let's go home and settle down. We needn't be afraid, now that
there's been a frost.'"
"Oh, why will you live in such a dreadful place?" cried Euphemia.
"You ought to go somewhere where you needn't be afraid of chills."
"That's jus' what I thought, ma'am," returned Pomona. "But Jone
an' me got a disease-map of this country an' we looked all over it
careful, an' wherever there wasn't chills there was somethin' that
seemed a good deal wuss to us.
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