"Well, but how was it, Ben, that you did not marry this Angelina you speak of?"
"I'll tell you; she thought she had me as safe as a hare in a trap, and she was as amiable as a lump of cotton. You'd have thought, to look at her, that she did nothing but smile; and, to hear her, that she said nothing but nice, mild, pleasant things, and I really began to think as I had found out the proper sort of animal."
"But you were mistaken?"
"I believe you, I was. One day I'd been there to see her, I mean, at her father's house, and she'd been as amiable as she could be; I got up to go away, with a determination that the next time I got there I would ask her to say yes, and when I had got a little way out of the garden of the house where they lived—it was out of town some distance—I found I had left my little walking-cane behind me, so I goes back to get it, and when I got into the garden I heard a voice."
"Whose voice?"
"Why Angelina's, to be sure; she was speaking to a poor little dab of a servant they had; and oh, my eye! how she did rap out, to be sure! Such a speech as I never heard in all my life. She went on a matter of ten minutes without stopping, and every other word was some ill name or another; and her voice—oh, gracious! it was like a bundle of wire all of a tangle—it was."
"And what did you do, then, upon making such a discovery as that in so very odd and unexpected a manner?"
"Do! What do you suppose I did?"
"I really cannot say, as you are rather an eccentric fellow."
"Well then, I'll tell you. I went up to the house, and just popped in my head, and says I, 'Angelina, I find out that all cats have claws after all; good evening, and no more from your humble servant, who don't mind the job of taming any wild animal but a woman;' and then off I walked, and I never heard of her afterwards."