"Well, Snell is going to be there, ain't he?"
"How do you know?"
"I'm going to tell him now."
And the woman did even so. If you wish the scene with Snell go back and read the scene with Tilton, changing the names. Nothing else need you change. Snell was hitching two mules to a wood wagon; but he heard the same speeches and made approximately the same replies. And the deed was done.
"There now!" boomed Mrs. Talleyrand as we rode beyond earshot of the dazed and lingering Snell. "Them two men been trying for two weeks to agree on a day to do this trifling job. They wasn't able; so I agreed on a day myself. Anything wrong with it?"
"You said you were going to talk straight to them."
"Ain't I just talked straight to Snell? Tilton will be there, won't he?"
"How about the way you talked to Tilton before you saw Snell?"
"Well, my lands! How you talk! You got to have a foundation to build on, haven't you?"
I saw it as a feat beyond my prowess to convict this woman in her own eyes of a dubious and considering veracity. So I merely wondered, in tones that would easily reach her, how the gentlemen might relish her diplomacy when they discovered it on the morrow. I preceded the word diplomacy with a slight and very affected cough.