“Now, what do you mean by that? A gentleman! Ump! I’ve never knowed the time I ain’t heard somebody called a gentleman that hadn’t any more call to be considered a gentleman than your pap here. A gentleman, hey? you mean he has clothes made by a tailor and money in his pockets, and goes to the barber frequent, probably takes a bath every day—runnin’ water in his room at home, you guess? Hum—well—yes—he’s a gentleman ’cording to them standards. I got my own standard I measure men by, thank God.”
In his excitement Captain Grif rose from his chair and limped back and forth on the porch, thumping his cane down hard at each step. He went on:
“Now, Dale, here—he’s a gentleman. You bet he is. He ain’t got no initial embroidered on his shirts—ain’t got mor’n two, likely. He ain’t got no runnin’ water in his house—but he douses himself in the river every day; and he shaves himself. It’s some work for him to get himself up presentable. Tain’t no credit to a feller to keep clean when he has a shower bath in his closet.” He was chuckling again, and Wanza ventured to say:
“I call him a gentleman because—he’s different—that’s what he is. He don’t talk or look or act like any one in these parts. I like him. I think I could earn a bit amusing him when he is able to sit up, Dad.”
“You’ll march right back home here if I hear of your tryin’ it, gal, mark me, now!”
“But, Dad, you’re not fair! Why, he may be the best man living. You haven’t ever laid your eyes on him.”
“I knows it—I knows it, Wanza. I may sound a leetle mite prejudiced; but I ain’t—oh, no! I’m fair-minded; but I’m a reader of character, and I can tell as much by a man’s nightshirts as some of these here phrenologists can tell by the bumps on his head. The minute you said he had flowers and initials worked on his nightshirts that minute I said to myself, ‘He ain’t no good’; and you mark my words, he ain’t.”
Going home, Wanza said to me:
“Poor Dad, he’s terribly suspicious, ain’t he, Mr. Dale?”
“A little, Wanza, perhaps.”