"It only cost seventy cents a yard, an' there was fifteen yards of it. The pork netted more'n four hundred dollars. But that wa'n't the end of it. The woman hadn't wore the dress to church but one Sunday when her husband came into the store one day an' hung 'round a spell, lookin' 'bout as uneasy as a sinner under conviction, an' at last he winked your uncle into the back room, an' says Howlaway, says he:—
"'Jethro, you've got me in a heap o' trouble, 'cause of that silk dress you loaded on to my wife. She looks an' acts as if my Sunday clothes wasn't good enough to show alongside of it, an' other folks looks an' acts so too. So, Jethro, you've got to help me out. I've got to have some new clothes, an' they've got to be just so, or they won't do.' Your uncle said, 'All right,' an' got off a line from an advertisement in a city paper, about 'No fit, no pay.' Then he wrote to a city clothin' store for some samples of goods, an' for directions how to measure a man for a suit of clothes. Oh, he was a case, your uncle was; why, I do believe he'd ha' took an order from an angel for a new set of wing-feathers an' counted on gettin' the goods some way. I don't say he made light of it, though. I never see him so close-minded as he was for the next two weeks. One day I chaffed him a little about wastin' a lot o' time on a handsome hardware-goods drummer that hadn't much go, an' whose prices was too high anyway; but your uncle said:—
"'He's just about the height and build of Hawk Howlaway, an' he knows how to wear his clothes.' Then I knowed what was up. Well, to make a long story short, the clothes come, in the course o' time, and on an app'inted day Howlaway come too, lookin' about as wish-I-could-hide as a gal goin' to be married. Your uncle stuck up four lookin'-glasses on the back room wall, one over another, an' then he turned Howlaway loose in the room, with the clothes, an' a white shirt with cuffs an' collar on it, an' told him to lock himself in an' go to work, an' to pound on the door if he got into trouble. In about ten minutes he pounded, an' your uncle went in, an' Hawk was lookin' powerful cocky, though he said:—
"'There's somethin' that ain't quite right, though I don't know what 'tis.'
"'It's your hair—an' your beard,' said your uncle. 'Now, Hawk, you slip out o' them clothes, an' go down to Black Sam, that does barberin', an' tell him you want an all-round job: 't'll only cost a quarter. But wait a minute,' an' with that your uncle hurried into the store, took out of the cash-drawer a picture that he'd cut out of a paper that he'd been studyin' pretty hard for a week, took it back, an' said, 'Take this along, an' tell the barber it's about the style you want.'
"Well, when Hawk saw his own face in the glass after that reapin', he hardly knowed himself, an' he sneaked into the store by climbin' the fence an' knockin' at the back door, for fear of havin' to be interdooced to any neighbors that might be hangin' 'round the counters. Then he made another try at the clothes, an' called your uncle in again, and said:—
"'They looked all right until I put my hat on, an' then somethin' went wrong again.'
"'Shouldn't wonder if 'twas your hat,' said your uncle, comin' back for a special hat an' a pair of Sunday shoes, all Howlaway's size, that he'd ordered with the clothes. He took 'em in an' said:—
"'When you start to dress like a gentleman, to stand 'longside of a lady, you want to go the whole hog or none.'
"Well,—I didn't know this story was so long when I begun to tell it,—Hawk sneaked the clothes home, an' it come out in the course o' time that when on Sunday mornin' he dressed up an' showed off to his wife, she kissed him for the first time in three year, which sot him up so that he had the courage to go to church without first loadin' up with whiskey, as he'd expected to, to nerve him up to be looked at in his new things, an' when hog-killin' an' settlement time came round again, Hawk brought his pork to us, an' when he found his wife's silk dress hadn't been charged to him, he said in a high an' mighty way that he reckoned that until he was dead or divorced he could afford to pay for his own wife's duds, hearin' which, your uncle, who'd already socked the price of the dress onto the price of Hawk's own clothes, smiled out o' both sides of his mouth, an' all the way round to the back of his neck. An' since then, Hawk's always brought his pork to us, an' got a new silk dress ev'ry winter for his wife, an' new Sunday clothes for himself, an' nobody would he buy of but your uncle. Let's see; what was we talkin' 'bout when I turned off onto this story?"