“But I can’t tell a lie about you, even if I do want 167 to marry you. You don’t want to marry a liar, do you?”
“Well, the fact is, Jonathan, polite lyin’s the real foundation of all good manners. What we’ll ever do when we get to heaven where we have to tell the truth whether we want to or not, I’m sure I don’t know. It’ll be awful uncomfortable until we get used to it.”
“The law says you should tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothin’ but the truth,” persisted the literal wooer.
“Now, see here, Jonathan. Would you say that a dog’s tail was false and misleadin’ just because it isn’t the whole dog?”
This proposition was exceedingly confusing to Jonathan’s intelligence, but after careful consideration he felt obliged to say “No.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Mrs. Burke continued triumphantly, quickly following up her advantage. “You see a dog’s tail couldn’t be misleading, ’cause the dog leads the tail, and not the tail the dog. Any fool could see that.”
Jonathan felt that he had been tricked, although he could not see just how the thing had been accomplished; so he began again:
“Now Hepsey, we’re wanderin’ from the point, 168 and you’re just talkin’ to amuse yourself. Can’t you come down to business? Here I am a widower, and here you are a widowess, and we’re both lonesome, and we––”
“Who told you I was lonesome, I’d like to know?”
“Well, of course you didn’t, ’cause you never tell anything to anyone. But I guessed you was sometimes, from the looks of you.”