The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) by Marshall P. Wilder (english novels for beginners .TXT) 📗
- Author: Marshall P. Wilder
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The girl, laughing, surrendered the money, and the old man, taking an arm of each, marched them peremptorily away.
"Come to the house and git his clothes. Eferysing goes in—stofepipe hat, butterfly necktie, diamond pin, toothbrush, hair-oil, razor and soap."
They had got far enough around the corner to be out of sight of the store, during this gaiety, and the old man now shoved Seffy and the girl out in front of him, linked their arms, and retreated to the rear.
"What Sephenijah P. Baumgartner, Senior, hath j'ined together, let nobody put athunder, begoshens!" he announced.
The proceeding appeared to be painful to Seffy, but not to Sally. She frankly accepted the situation and promptly put into action its opportunities for coquetry. She begged him, first, with consummate aplomb, to aid her in adjusting her parcels more securely, insisting upon carrying them herself, and it would be impossible to describe adequately her allures. The electrical touches, half-caress,[Pg 381] half-defiance; the confidential whisperings, so that the wily old man in the rear might not hear; the surges up against him; the recoveries—only to surge again—these would require a mechanical contrivance which reports not only speech but action—and even this might easily fail, so subtle was it all!
"Sef—Seffy, I thought it was his old watch he was auctioning off. I wanted it for—for—a nest-egg! aha-ha-ha! You must excuse me."
"You wouldn't 'a' bid at all if you'd knowed it was me, I reckon," said Seffy.
"Yes, I would," declared the coquette. "I'd rather have you than any nest-egg in the whole world—any two of 'em!"—and when he did not take his chance—"if they were made of gold!"
But then she spoiled it.
"It's worse fellows than you, Seffy." The touch of coquetry was but too apparent.
"And better," said Seffy, with a lump in his throat. "I know I ain't no good with girls—and I don't care!"
"Yes!" she assented wickedly. "There are better ones."
"Sam Pritz—"
Sally looked away, smiled, and was silent.
"Sulky Seffy!" she finally said.
"If he does stink of salt mackerel, and 'most always drunk!" Seffy went on bitterly. "He's nothing but a molasses-tapper!"
Sally began to drift farther away and to sing. Calling Pritz names was of no consequence—except that it kept Seffy from making love to her while he was doing it—which seemed foolish to Sally. The old man came up and brought them together again.
"Oach! go 'long and make lofe some more. I like to[Pg 382] see it. I expect I am an old fool, but I like to see it—it's like ol' times—yas, and if you don't look out there, Seffy, I'll take a hand myself—yassir! go 'long!"
He drew them very close together, each looking the other way. Indeed he held them there for a moment, roughly.
Seffy stole a glance at Sally. He wanted to see how she was taking his father's odiously intimate suggestion. But it happened that Sally wanted to see how he was taking it. She laughed with the frankest of joy as their eyes met.
"Seffy—I do—like you," said the coquette. "And you ought to know it. You imp!"
Now this was immensely stimulating to the bashful Seffy.
"I like you," he said—"ever since we was babies."
"Sef—I don't believe you. Or you wouldn't waste your time so—about Sam Pritz!"
"Er—Sally—where you going to to-night?" Seffy meant to prove himself.
And Sally answered, with a little fright at the sudden aggressiveness she had procured.
"Nowheres that I know of."
"Well—may I set up with you?"
The pea-green sunbonnet could not conceal the utter amazement and then the radiance which shot into Sally's face.
"Set—up—with—me!"
"Yes!" said Seffy, almost savagely. "That's what I said."
"Oh, I—I guess so! Yes! of course!" she answered variously, and rushed off home.
"You know I own you," she laughed back, as if she had not been sufficiently explicit. "I paid for you! Your[Pg 383] pappy's got the money! I'll expect my property to-night."
"Yas!" shouted the happy old man, "and begoshens! it's a reg'lar bargain! Ain't it, Seffy? You her property—real estate, hereditaments and tenements." And even Seffy was drawn into the joyous laughing conceit of it! Had he not just done the bravest thing of his small life?
"Yes!" he cried after the fascinating Sally. "For sure and certain, to-night!"
"It's a bargain!" cried she.
"For better or worser, richer or poorer, up an' down, in an' out, chassez right and left! Aha-ha-ha! Aha-ha-ha! But, Seffy,"—and the happy father turned to the happy son and hugged him, "don't you efer forgit that she's a feather-head and got a bright red temper like her daddy! And they both work mighty bad together sometimes. When you get her at the right place onct—well, nail her down—hand and feet—so's she can't git away. When she gits mad her little brain evaporates, and if she had a knife she'd go round stabbing her best friends—that's the only sing that safes her—yas, and us!—no knife. If she had a knife it would be funerals following her all the time."
IIThey advanced together now, Seffy's father whistling some tune that was never heard before on earth, and, with his arm in that of his son, they watched Sally bounding away. Once more, as she leaped a fence, she looked laughingly back. The old man whistled wildly out of tune. Seffy waved a hand!
"Now you shouting, Seffy! Shout ag'in!"
"I didn't say a word!"
"Well—it ain't too late! Go on!"[Pg 384]
Now Seffy understood and laughed with his father.
"Nice gal, Sef—Seffy!"
"Yes!" admitted Seffy with reserve.
"Healthy."
Seffy agreed to this, also.
"No doctor-bills!" his father amplified.
Seffy said nothing.
"Entire orphen."
"She's got a granny!"
"Yas," chuckled the old man at the way his son was drifting into the situation—thinking about granny!—"but Sally owns the farm!"
"Uhu!" said Seffy, whatever that might mean.
"And Sally's the boss!"
Silence.
"And granny won't object to any one Sally marries, anyhow—she dassent! She'd git licked!"
"Who said anything about marrying?"
Seffy was speciously savage now—as any successful wooer might be.
"Nobody but me, sank you!" said the old man with equally specious meekness. "Look how she ken jump a six-rail fence. Like a three-year filly! She's a nice gal, Seffy—and the farms j'ine together—her pasture-field and our corn-field. And she's kissing her hand backwards! At me or you, Seffy?"
Seffy said he didn't know. And he did not return the kiss—though he yearned to.
"Well, I bet a dollar that the first initial of his last name is Sephenijah P. Baumgartner, Junior."
"Well!" said Seffy with a great flourish, "I'm going to set up with her to-night."
"Oach—git out, Sef!"—though he knew it.
"You'll see."[Pg 385]
"No, I won't," said his father. "I wouldn't be so durn mean. Nossir!"
Seffy grinned at this subtle foolery, and his courage continued to grow.
"I'm going to wear my high hat!" he announced, with his nose quite in the air.
"No, Sef!" said the old man with a wonderful inflection, facing him about that he might look into his determined face. For it must be explained that the stovepipe hat, in that day and that country, was dedicated only to the most momentous social occasions and that, consequently, gentlemen wore it to go courting.
"Yes!" declared Seffy again.
The stovepipe, the stovepipe—"
chanted Seffy's frivolous father in the way of the Anvil Chorus.
"And my butterfly necktie with—"
"Wiss the di'mond on?" whispered his father.
They laughed in confidence of their secret. Seffy, the successful wooer, was thawing out again. The diamond was not a diamond at all—the Hebrew who sold it to Seffy had confessed as much. But he also swore that if it were kept in perfect polish no one but a diamond merchant could tell the difference. Therefore, there being no diamond merchant anywhere near, and the jewel being always immaculate, Seffy presented it as a diamond and had risen perceptibly in the opinion of the vicinage.
"And—and—and—Sef—Seffy, what you goin' to do?"
"Do?"
Seffy had been absorbed in what he was going to wear. "Yas—yas—that's the most important." He encircled[Pg 386] Seffy's waist and gently squeezed it. "Oh, of course! Hah? But what yit?"
I regret to say that Seffy did not understand.
"Seffy," he said impressively, "you haf' tol' me what you goin' to wear. It ain't much. The weather's yit pooty col' nights. But I ken stand it if you ken—God knows about Sally! Now, what you goin' to do—that's the conuntrum I ast you!"
Still it was not clear to Seffy.
"Why—what I'm a-going to do, hah? Why—whatever occurs."
"Gosh-a'mighty! And nefer say a word or do a sing to help the occurrences along? Goshens! What a setting-up! Why—say—Seffy, what you set up for?"
Seffy did not exactly know. He had never hoped to practise the thing—in that sublimely militant phase.
"What do you think?"
"Well, Sef—plow straight to her heart. I wisht I had your chance. I'd show you a other-guess kind a setting-up—yassir! Make your mouth warter and your head swim, begoshens! Why, that Sally's just like a young stubble-field; got to be worked constant, and plowed deep, and manured heafy, and mebby drained wiss blind ditches, and crops changed constant, and kep' a-going thataway—constant—constant—so's the weeds can't git in her. Then you ken put her in wheat after a while and git your money back."
This drastic metaphor had its effect. Seffy began to understand. He said so.
"Now, look here, Seffy," his father went on more softly, "when you git to this—and this—and this,"—he went through his pantomime again, and it included a progressive caressing to the kissing point—"well, chust when you bose comfortable—hah?—mebby on one cheer,[Pg 387] what I know—it's so long sence I done it myself—when you bose comfortable, ast her—chust ast her—aham!—what she'll take for the pasture-field! She owns you bose and she can't use bose you and the pasture. A bird in the hand is worth seferal in another feller's—not so?"
But Seffy only stopped and stared at his father. This, again, he did not understand.
"You know well enough I got no money to buy no pasture-field," said he.
"Gosh-a'mighty!" said the old man joyfully, making as if he would strike Seffy with his huge fist—a thing he often did. "And ain't got nossing to trade?"
"Nothing except the mare!" said the boy.
"Say—ain't you got no feelings, you idjiot?"
"Oh—" said Seffy. And then: "But what's feelings got to do with cow-pasture?"
"Oach! No wonder he wants to be an anchel, and wiss the anchels stand—holding sings in his hands and on his head! He's too good for this wile world. He'd linger shifering on the brink and fear to launch away all his durn life—if some one didn't push him in. So here goes!"
This was spoken to the skies, apparently, but now he turned to his son again.
"Look a-yere, you young dummer-ux,[2] feelings is the same to gals like Sally, as money is to you and me. You ken buy potatoes wiss 'em! Do you understand?"
Seffy said that he did, now.
"Well, then, I'fe tried to buy that pasture-field a sousand times—"
Seffy started.
"Yas, that's a little bit a lie—mebby a dozen times. And at last Sally's daddy said he'd lick me if I efer said[Pg 388] pasture-field ag'in, and I said it ag'in and he licked me! He was a big man—and red-headed yit, like Sally. Now, look a-yere—you ken git that pasture-field wissout money and wissout price—except you' dam' feelings which ain't no other use. Sally won't lick you—if she is bigger—don't be a-skeered. You got tons of feelin's you ain't got no other use for—don't waste 'em—they're good green money, and we'll git efen wiss Sally's daddy for licking me yit—and somesing on the side! Huh?"
At last it was evident that Seffy fully understood, and his father broke into that discordant whistle once more.
"A gal that ken jump a six-rail fence—and wissout no running start—don't let her git apast you!"
"Well, I'm going to set up with her to-night," said Seffy again, with a huge ahem. And the tune his father whistled as he opened the door for him sounded something like "I want to be an angel."
"But not to buy no pasture-land!" warned Seffy.
"Oach, no, of course not!" agreed his wily old father. "That's just one of my durn jokes. But I expect I'll take the fence down to-morrow! Say, Sef, you chust marry the gal. I'll take keer the fence!"
IIIIt took Seffy a long time to array himself as he had threatened. And when it was all done you wouldn't have known him—you wouldn't have cared to know him. For his fine yellow hair was changed to an ugly brown by the patent hair-oil with which he had dressed it—and you would not have liked its fragrance, I trust. Bergamot, I think it was. His fine young throat was garroted within
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