"Harnah wor Uncle 'Siah's second gal, and just as pooty as a picter. She looked suthin' like Dolcy, Dora's little adopted darter, you know: but she wor alluz a-larfin', and gitting off her jokes; and had a sort of a wicked look by spells, enough to make a feller's flesh creep on his bones."
"Lor', that's enough o' Harnah! She wa'n't so drefful different from other folks. Git along to the story part on't," interrupted Mehitable, clicking her knitting-needles energetically.
Seth looked at her a little indignantly for a moment, and then burst into a loud laugh,—
"Lor'! I'd clear forgot how it used ter spite Hit to hear me praise up Harnah. You see, sir, Mehitabul wor a sort o' cousin o' my mother's, and so come to live long of us when her father died: but she never cottoned to Harnah very strong when she see how well I liked her; though, now she's got me for her own man, I'd think"—
"But the panther, Mr. Ross," interposed Dora, who saw, with womanly sympathy, the flush of mortification upon Mehitable's face: "do tell us about the panther."
"Yes: I b'lieve my idees was kind o' wandering from the pint; but that's nothing strange, if you knowed what an out-an-outer that gal was. Well, well, 'tain't no use a-crying over spilt milk, and by-gones may as well be stay-gones.
"Sam Hedge, he was my uncle's hired man, and a plaguy smart feller too; good-looking, merry as a grig, a live Yankee for faculty, and pretty forehanded too, though he hadn't set up for himself then. I more than suspicioned he'd ruther live with Uncle 'Siah, and see Harnah from morning to night, than go off and take up land for himself; or maybe he didn't feel as if he'd the peth to take right hold of new land all alone. Anyway, there he wor, and there he stuck, right squar in my way, do as much as I might to git him out on't.
"Of course, you onderstand about being in my way means all along o' Harnah. We was both sweet on her, and no mistake; though nary one on us, nor, I believe, the gal herself, could ha' told which one she favored.
"Waal, to skip over all the rest (though there's the stuff for half a dozen stories in it), I'll come to one night when I'd been up to Uncle 'Siah's, and Harnah and Sam had come down to the crick to see me off; for I'd come in my boat. I felt kind o' savage; for Harnah had been mighty pooty with me all that evening; and I knew Sam had come down to the boat a purpose to go back to the house with her, and, 'fore they was half-way, she'd come right round, and be just as clever to him as she'd been before to me."
"If you knew your cousin to be such a terrible little flirt as that, I shouldn't think you would have cared so much about her, Seth," suggested Karl, laughing.