"Well," she said, her face reddening under the tan, "if you see anything green throw your hat at it! Sellin' gawp-seed, or what is your business?"
"I beg your pardon," "I meant no offense," and even "Excuse me" were things I had never learned to say. I had learned to fight any one who took offense at me; and if they didn't like my style they could lump it--such was my code of manners, and the code of my class. To beg pardon was to knuckle under--and it took something more than I was master of in the way of putting on style to ask to be excused, even if the element of back-down were eliminated. Remember, I had been "educated" on the canal. So I tried to look her out of countenance, grew red, retreated, and went about some sort of needless work without a word--completely defeated. I thought she seemed rather to like this; and that evening I went over and offered Mrs. Fewkes some butter and milk, of which I had a plenty.
I was soon on good terms with the Fewkes family. Old Man Fewkes told me he was going to Negosha--a region of which I had never heard. It was away off to the westward, he said; and years afterward I made up my mind that the name was made up of the two words Nebraska and Dakota--not very well joined together. Mrs. Fewkes was not strong for Negosha; and when Fewkes offered to go to Texas, she objected because it was so far.
"Why," said the old man indignantly, "it hain't only a matter of fifteen hundred mile! An' the trees is in constant varder!"
He still harped on Negosha, though, and during the evening while we were fattening up on my bread and meat, which I had on a broad hint added to our meal, he told me that what he really wanted was an estate where he could have an artificial lake and keep some deer and plenty of ducks and geese. Swans, too, he said could be raised at a profit, and sold to other well-to-do people. He said that by good farming he could get along with only a few hundred acres of plow land. Mrs. Fewkes grew more indulgent to these ideas as the food satisfied her hungry stomach. Celebrate believed that if he could once get out among 'em he could do well as a hunter and trapper; while Surajah kept listening to the honking of the wild geese and planning to catch enough of them with baited hooks to feed the whole family all the way to Negosha, and provide plenty of money by selling the surplus to the emigrants. Rowena sat in her ragged dress, her burst shoes drawn in under her skirt, looking at her family with an expression of unconcealed scorn. When she got a chance to speak to me, she did so in a very friendly manner.
"Did you ever see," said she, "such a set of darned infarnal fools as we are?"
Before the evening was over, however, and she had hidden herself away in her clothes under a thin and ragged comforter in their wagon, she had joined in the discussion of their castle in Spain in a way that showed her to be a legitimate Fewkes. She spoke for a white saddle horse, a beautiful side-saddle, a long blue riding-habit with shot in the seam, and a man to keep the horse in order. She wanted to be able to rub the horse with a white silk handkerchief without soiling it. Ah, well! dreams hovered over all our camps then. The howling of the wolves couldn't drive them away. Poor Rowena!