“Splendid. But what do you want of me?”
“What dew I want? Law, now, you’re jest like all the rest o’ the western folks—want a feller tew come tew the p’int instanter, without the least bit o’ prevaricatin’ or dodgin’ round the stump, as Tabitha Simpson used to say. Tabitha Simpson was my third cousin, stranger, on my mother’s side, a gal o’ the femenine persuasion, by the way, and I swan tew man, there never was a couple in all Christendom as had more fun than Tabitha and me used to have. There was one time in partic’lar—”
“See here,” interposed McCabe, crustily, “before you continue your nonsense I should like to know who you are?”
“Me? Darn my buttons! mother allus said I was the most forgitful child she had, and I’m forever provin’ the fact to myself in this very way. Me? Why, bless you, I’m Jonathan Boggs, all the way from Maine! Jonathan Boggs, stranger, a first-rate feller on the whole, who was considered the smartest member of his father’s family, until he robbed neighbor Green’s hen-roost and had to turn tail on the old humstead.”
Jim McCabe began to regard the Yankee with some curiosity.
“When did you arrive here, Mr. Boggs?” he inquired.
“I brought up in this hamlet yesterday,” replied the Yankee, squeezing his hands with difficulty into the pockets of his “tights.”
“Yesterday,” repeated the other. “It may seem strange to you, but I really think I have seen your face somewhere.”
“Dew tell? I s’pect you have, mister, for I often go there,” said the “specimen,” with provoking coolness. “As Tabitha Simpson used to say, ‘Cousin Jonathan must be known to be liked,’ and I’m glad to l’arn as how my phiz ain’t unfamiliar tew you—”
But Jim McCabe was too thoroughly exasperated by the sang froid of his interlocutor, to let him go on in this strain.