“But prob’ly yours was all good sense,” Simon went on. “Why, there was men lugged right out of that court-room in hysterics, and had to be pounded on the back by dep’ty sheriffs to bring ’em to. I remember one letter called her ‘Ittikins, Pittikins, Popsy Sweet,’ and she was settin’ there in the court-room with a face on her sourer’n a dill pickle. Thought I’d die a-laughin’! Of course you didn’t git no such sculch as that into your letters, and so the trial won’t be funny. But you bein’ so prominunt now and havin’ forty thousand in the bank, and bein’ known to a good many people ’round up country since Imogene’s scrape there took you out amongst folks——”
Hiram couldn’t detect any hidden meaning in Simon’s guileless mien and reference to “up country,” and though he stared hard, he did not interrupt. “As I say, bein’ now, as you might call it, a solid citizen, it will certainly tickle folks somethin’ tremendous if there is any such mushiness in your trial.”
A student in physiognomy might have read that memory was playing havoc with Hiram Look’s resolution.
“I was tryin’ to think,” went on Peak, knuckling his forehead, “what it was that the signory was tellin’ me that time when she rode away with me. She’s such a liar that there ain’t no tellin’ nothin’ by what she says, but it seems to me she told me that you called her something like ‘Sweety-tweety’ or ‘Tweeny-weeny girlikins’—somethin’ like that. She lied, prob’ly, and of course you’d never put anything like that into a letter. How them newspapers do like to string out things—funny kind of things—when a man is prominunt and has got money in the bank! Folks can’t help laughin’—they jest nat’rally can’t, Hime! There you’ll be settin’ in that court-room lookin’ ugly as a gibcat, and her lawyer’ll be readin’ them letters with that kind of sassy——”
Hiram got up, kicked his chair off the porch, and in rage that he couldn’t control he shook his fist under Peak’s nose.
“Twit me another word—just one other word—and I’ll drive that old nose of your’n clear’n up into the roof of your head!”
He stumped away around the corner of the house and disappeared in the barn.
“If the Court ain’t mistook,” soliloquised Simon, settling himself into a more comfortable position in his chair, “Hime Look has got at least three elephants on his hands now. He’s got one out there in the barn with him that eats hay, one down to the tavern that eats money, and one up country that will eat him, if he don’t look out.” Then he spread his handkerchief over his face and went to sleep.
Hiram waked him up an hour or so later.
“Sime,” he said humbly, “I’ve been out there set-tin’ down on the hay and rememberin’ back about what I wrote to her—and it’s all of it pretty clear in my mind, ’cause I never wrote love letters to any one else. And I can’t face it. I can’t set in court and hear it. I couldn’t ever face any one that knowed me here or elsewhere.