peppermint cast a mist before 'em. My nose could have took its
oath, if noses wuz ever put onto a bar of Justice - my nose would
have gin its firm testimony that Bial Flamburg drinked.

And there wuz that sort of a air about him, that I can't describe
exactly - a sort of a half offish, half familier and wholly
disagreeable mean, that can be onderstood but not described. No,
you can't picture that liniment, but you can be affected by it.
Wall, Bial had it.

And I kep' on a not likin' him, and kep' stiddy onwards a likin'
Abram Gee. I couldn't help it, nor did'nt want to. And I looked
out constant to ketch him in some big story that would break him
right down in Ardelia's eyes, for I knew if she had been brought
up on any one commandment more'n another, it wuz the one ag'inst
lyin'. She hated lyin'.

She had been brought up on the hull of the commandments but on
that one in particeler; she wuz brung up sharp but good. But not
one lie could I ketch him in. And he stuck to it, that his father
wuz a banker and doin' a heavy business.

Wall, it kep' on, she a goin' with him through ambition, for I see
plain, by signs I knoo, that she didn't love him half as well as
she did Abram. And I felt bad, dretful bad, to set still and see
Ambition ondoin' of her. For oft and oft she would speak to me of
Bial's father's bank and the heft of the business he wuz a doin'.

And I finally got so worked up in my mind that I gin a sly hint to
Abram Gee, that if he ever wanted to get Ardelia Tutt, he had