'I'll be fifty-eight or mebbe fifty-nine come next spring,' says Am.
"'How old air _you_ ?' the dominie says, turnin' to Lize.

She wriggled a minute an' says, 'Wa'al, I reckon I'm all o' thirty,' she says." "All o' thirty!" exclaimed Aunt Polly.

"The woman 's most 's old 's I be." David laughed and went on with, "Wa'al, Dick said at that the dominie give a kind of a choke, an' Dick he bust right out, an' Lize looked at him as if she c'd eat him.

Dick said the dominie didn't say anythin' fer a minute or two, an' then he says to Am, 'I suppose you c'n find somebody that'll marry you, but I cert'inly won't, an' what possesses you to commit such a piece o' folly,' he says, 'passes my understandin'.

What earthly reason have you fer wantin' to marry?
On your own showin',' he says, 'neither one on you 's got a cent o' money or any settled way o' gettin' any.' "'That's jest the very reason,' says Am, 'that's jest the _very reason_.
I hain't got nothin', an' Mis' Annis hain't got nothin', an' we figured that we'd jest better git married an' settle down, an' make a good home fer us both,' an' if that ain't good reasonin'," David concluded, "I don't know what is." "An' be they actially married ?" asked Mrs.Bixbee, still incredulous of anything so preposterous.
"So Dick says," was the reply.