“That old fool is gittin’ to be a town nuisance,” he observed. “When I came down this mornin’ he was standin’ across from Judge Willard’s house like a setter dog opposite a fox hole, croakin’ ‘Hard times a-comin’ to P’lermo.’ I don’t reckon that hard times is goin’ to start from Coll Willard’s place. Leastways, if I was as well fixed as the old Judge is I shouldn’t be reckonin’ to see hard times roostin’ on my primises just yit awhile.”
“You ain’t alius lived in P’lermo same’s me and Lys has, Brickett,” said Amazeen. “I don’t know what kind of things is goin’ to happen or what kind of a hard-times bird has come to nest on Coll Willard’s place, but it don’t take no seventh sense to smell trouble in this town now. Hime Look will make it without meanin’ to. He ain’t nat’rally a bad man, Hime ain’t. It’s his cussed tongue and the freaks he takes. Ev’ry one ’round him keeps gittin’ all stirred up. Long ago’s he went to the district school he had all the girls in fidgits about the snakes and frogs he lugged in his pants pockets—wa’n’t happy without a menagerie.
“Run away with circuses three times and old man Look had to chase him up and bring him home. Started off once with a shelter-tent and a angle worm in a mustard bottle and followed the fairs ’round in counties above here. Wa’n’t scarcely eighteen then, but he had more cheek than a Guinea nigger. Folks would listen to him shoutin’ up that ‘infant anaconda’—-that’s what he called the angle-worm—and would pay ten cents and go in and then would come out mad as they could stick. Most of the time he was able to keep hollerin’ so loud that no one could hear them complainin’. He’d say: ‘The gentleman who has jest come out of the tent states that under this canvas is the grandest sight that the civilised world has got to offer. He advises his friends to pass in, one and all, and behold the only infant anaconda in captivity.’ It certainly did take cheek to run that show, but he had it.”
Amazeen went fishing in his pockets for a match.
“Well, he couldn’t always holler ’em down, could he?” inquired Brickett, skeptically. “I should have thought that some one would ’a’ showed him up.”
The old man chuckled.
“Oh, once in a while a man would git heard and then Hime would bend down and ask:
“‘What’s the matter with you?’
“‘Why, he ain’t longer’n your finger,’ the man would yap back.
“‘Oh, he ain’t big enough? That’s it!’ Hime would say. ‘Well, go right back in and wait till he grows. ‘There won’t be any extry charge.’