twenty times a day to relate to gaping, grinning audiences just how
she looked, what she did, and said, and what Perez said. The fact that
Obadiah's positive information on the subject was limited to a few
words that Prudence had dropped, made it necessary for him to depend
largely on his imagination to satisfy the demands of his auditors,
which accounts for the slight discrepancy between the actual facts as
known to the reader and the popular version. After everybody had haw
hawed and cracked his joke over Obadiah's last repetition of the
anecdote, Peleg observed:

"I dunno's az a feller kin blame Perez fer givin intew her. The gal's
derned hansum, though she be mos' too black complected."

"She ain't none tew black, not to my thinkin," said Widow Bingham,
looking up from her knitting as she sat behind the bar,--the widow
herself was a buxom brunette--"but I never did see anybuddy kerry ther
nose quite so high in all my born days. She don't pay no more 'tension
to common folks 'n if they wuz dirt under her feet."

"Whar's Meshech Little, ter night?" inquired Israel Goodrich, not so
much interested as the younger men in the points of young women.

"He's been drunk all day," said Obadiah, who always knew everything
that was going on.

"Whar'd he git the money?" asked some one.

"Meshech don' need no money tew git drunk," said Abner. "He's got a
thirst ontew him as'll draw liquor aout a cask a rod orf, an the bung
in, jess like the clouds draws water on a hot day. He don' need no