"By trainin', though not by birth," admitted Dan Anderson. "Georgia girl originally, they tell me, and Dagoized proper, subsequent. All Yankee girls have to be Dagoized before they can learn to sing right good and strong, you know. They frequent learn a heap of things besides 'Annie Laurie'—and besides singin'. Oh, I can see the Yankee Dago lady right now. Fancy works installed in the roof of her mouth, adjacent and adjoinin' to her tongue, teeth, and other vocal outfit.
"Now, this here Georgia girl, accordin' to all stories, has sung herself into about a quarter of a million dollars and four or five different husbands with that voice of hers; and that same 'Annie Laurie' song was largely responsible. Now, why, why, couldn't she have taken a fellow of her size, and not gone and made trouble for Tom Osby? It wasn't fair play.
"Now, Tom, he sits humped over in there, a-lookin' in that horn. What does he see? Madame Donatelli? Does he see her show her teeth and bat her eyes when she's fetchin' one of them hand-curled trills of hers? Nay, nay. What he sees is a girl just like the one he used to know—"
"Whoa! Hold on there; that'll about do," said McKinney. "This country's just as good as—"
"No, let him go on," said Curly to McKinney. "Onct over on the Brazos—"
"Sometimes I think you fellows are inclined to be provincial," said Dan Anderson, calmly. "Now, I'm not goin' to talk if you don't leave me alone. Listen. What does Tom Osby see in that horn that he's lookin' into? I'll tell you. He sees a plumb angel in white clothes and a blue sash. She's got gray eyes and brown hair, and she's just a little bit shorter than will go right under my arm here when I stretch it out level."
"That's about right!" said McKinney.
"She's got on white," resumed Dan Anderson, casting a glance about him in the dusk of the evening. "The girl's got to have on white. There ain't no man can hold out when they come in white and have on a blue sash—it's no use tryin' then.
"Now, there she is, a-settin' at the piano in there in the front parlor; daddy's gone out into the country after a load of wood, like enough; old lady's gone to bed, after a hard day's labor. Honeysuckles bloomin' all around, because in New Jersey—"
"It wasn't in New Jersey," said Learned Counsel, hastily, before he thought.