“Tell us all about it Obadiah, we wanter hear it agin,” was the general demand.
“Ye see the way on't wuz this,” said Obadiah, nothing loath. “She come in all a cryin an scairt like, and Perez he wuz thar an so wuz the res' o' the family, an the fuss thing she does, she gits down on the floor intew the sand with a new silk gown she hed on, and asses Perez to hev the hoss-fiddles stopped. An he said t'er fuss, as haow he wouldn't, said 'twas good nuff fur the silk stockings, and he pinted ter Reub an says for her tew see what they'd done ter his family. But she cried an tuck on, an says ez haow she wouldn't git up 'nless he'd stop the hoss-fiddles, an so he hed tew give in, an that's all I knows about it.”
“Ye see Obadiah knows all baout it,” said Abner. “He keeps kumpny with the Fennell gal, as is tew the Hamlins. He got it straight's a string, didn't ye, Obadiah?”
“Yes,” said Obadiah, “it's all jess so. Thar ain't no mistake.”
No incident of the insurrection had taken such hold on the popular imagination as the appeal of Desire Edwards to Perez for protection. It was immensely flattering to the vanity of the mob, as typifying the state of terror to which the aristocrats had been reduced, and all the louts in town felt an inch the taller, by reason of it, and walked with an additional swagger. The demand for the details of the scene between Perez and Desire was insatiable and Obadiah was called on 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.