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Now, I knew of course, that he meant he was going to take the widder with him, but Peter spoke up and says he:

“Sorry, Beriah, but you’re too late. Eben asked me for the horse and buggy this morning. I told him he could have the open buggy; the other one’s being repaired, and I wouldn’t lend the new surrey to the Grand Panjandrum himself. Eben’s going to take the fair Emma for a ride,” he says. “Beriah, I’m afraid our beloved Cobb is, in the innocence of his youth, being roped in by the sophisticated damsel in the shoo-fly hat,” says he.

Me and Jonadab hadn’t had time to tell Peter how matters stood betwixt the prophets, or most likely he wouldn’t have said that. It hit Beriah like a snowslide off a barn roof. I found out afterwards that the widder had more’n half promised to go with HIM. He slumped down in his chair as if his mainmast was carried away, and he didn’t even rise to blow for the rest of the time we was in the shanty. Just set there, looking fishy-eyed at the floor.

Next morning I met Eben prancing around in his Sunday clothes and with a necktie on that would make a rainbow look like a mourning badge.

“Hello!” says I. “You seem to be pretty chipper. You ain’t going to start for that fifteen-mile ride through the woods to Ostable, be you? Looks to me as if ’twas going to rain.”

“The predictions for this day,” says he, “is cloudy in the forenoon, but clearing later on. Wind, sou’east, changing to south and sou’west.”

“Did Beriah send that out?” says I, looking doubtful, for if ever it looked like dirty weather, I thought it did right then.

“ME and Beriah sent it out,” he says, jealous-like. But I knew ’twas Beriah’s forecast or he wouldn’t have been so sure of it.

Pretty soon out comes Peter, looking dubious at the sky.

“If it was anybody else but Beriah,” he says, “I’d say this mornings prophecy ought to be sent to Puck. Where is the seventh son of the seventh son–the only original American seer?”

He wasn’t in the weather-shanty, and we finally found him on one of the seats ‘way up on the edge of the bluff. He didn’t look ’round when we come up, but just stared at the water.

“Hey, Elijah!” says Brown. He was always calling Beriah “Elijah” or “Isaiah” or “Jeremiah” or some other prophet name out of Scripture. “Does this go?” And he held out the telegraph-blank with the morning’s prediction on it.

Beriah looked around just for a second. He looked to me sort of sick and pale–that is, as pale as his sun-burned rhinoceros hide would ever turn.

“The forecast for to-day,” says he, looking at the water again, “is cloudy in the forenoon, but clearing later on. Wind sou’east, changing to south and sou’west.”

“Right you are!” says Peter, joyful. “We start for Setuckit, then. And here’s where the South Shore Weather Bureau hands another swift jolt to your Uncle Sam.”

So, after breakfast, the catboats loaded up, the girls giggling and screaming, and the men boarders dressed in what they hoped was sea- togs. They sailed away ’round the lighthouse and headed up the shore, and the wind was sou’east sure and sartin, but the “clearing” part wasn’t in sight yet.

Beriah didn’t watch ’em go. He stayed in the shanty. But by and by, when Eben drove the buggy out of the barn and Emma come skipping down the piazza steps, I see him peeking out of the little winder.

The Kelly critter had all sail sot and colors flying. Her dress was some sort of mosquito netting with wall-paper posies on it, and there was more ribbons flapping than there is reef-p’ints on a mainsail. And her hat! Great guns! It looked like one of them pictures you see in a flower-seed catalogue.