Pomona takes a Bridal Trip

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"Have you had your bridal trip?" asked Euphemia.

"Oh yes!" said Pomona. "It's all over an' done with, an' we're settled in our house."

"Well, sit right down here on the steps and tell us all about it," said Euphemia, in a glow of delightful expectancy, and Pomona, nothing loth, sat down and told her tale.

"You see," said she, untying her bonnet strings, to give an easier movement to her chin, "we didn't say where we was goin' when we started out, for the truth was we didn't know. We couldn't afford to take no big trip, and yet we wanted to do the thing up jus' as right as we could, seein' as you had set your heart on it, an' as we had, too, for that matter. Niagery Fall was what I wanted, but he said that it cost so much to see the sights there that he hadn't money to spare to take us there an' pay for all the sight-seein', too. We might go, he said, without seein' the sights, or, if there was any way of seein' the sights without goin', that might do, but he couldn't do both. So we give that up, and after thinkin' a good deal, we agreed to go to some other falls, which might come cheaper, an' may-be be jus' as good to begin on. So we thought of Passaic Falls, up to Paterson, an' we went there, an' took a room at a little hotel, an' walked over to the falls. But they wasn't no good, after all, for there wasn't no water runnin' over em. There was rocks and precipicers, an' direful depths, and everything for a good falls, except water, and that was all bein' used at the mills. 'Well, Miguel,' says I, 'this is about as nice a place for a falls as ever I see,' but--"

"Miguel!" cried Euphemia. "Is that your husband's name?"

"Well, no," said Pomona, "it isn't. His given name is Jonas, but I hated to call him Jonas, an' on a bridal trip, too. He might jus' as well have had a more romantic-er name, if his parents had 'a' thought of it. So I determined I'd give him a better one, while we was on our journey, anyhow, an' I changed his name to Miguel, which was the name of a Spanish count. He wanted me to call him Jiguel, because, he said, that would have a kind of a floating smell of his old name, but I didn't never do it. Well, neither of us didn't care to stay about no dry falls, so we went back to the hotel and got our supper, and begun to wonder what we should do next day. He said we'd better put it off and dream about it, and make up our minds nex' mornin', which I agreed to, an', that evenin', as we was sittin' in our room I asked Miguel to tell me the story of his life. He said, at first, it hadn't none, but when I seemed a kinder put out at this, he told me I mustn't mind, an' he would reveal the whole. So he told me this story: