“Wall, I don’t exactly need it, Samantha, but it would be a comfert to me to own one. I should dearly love a round barn.”
And he went on pensively, - “I wonder how much it would cost. I wouldn’t have it quite so big as this is. I’d have it for a horse barn, Samantha. It would look so fashionable, and genteel. Think what it would be, Samantha, to keep our old mair in a round barn, why the mair would renew her age.”
“She wouldn’t pay no attention to it,” sez I. “She knows too much.” And I added in cooler, more dignifieder tones, but dretful meanin’ ones, “The old mair, Josiah Allen, don’t run after every new fancy she hears on. She don’t try to be fashionable, and she haint high-headed, except,” sez I, reasenably, “when you check her up too much.”
“Wall,” sez he, “I am bound to make some enquiries. Hello!” says he to a bystander a comin’ by. “Have you any idee what such a barn as that would cost? A little smaller one, I don’t need so big a one. How many feet of lumber do you s’pose it would take for it? I ask you,” sez he, “as between man and man.”
I nudged him there, for as I have said, I didn’t believe then, and I don’t believe now, that he or any other man ever knew or mistrusted what they meant by that term “as between man and man.” I think it sounds kind o’ flat, and I always oppose Josiah’s usin’ it; he loves it.
Wall, the man broke out a’ laughin’ and sez he, “That haint a barn, that is a tree.”
“A tree!” sez I, a sort o’ cranin’ my neck forward in deep amaze. And what exclamation Josiah Allen made, I will not be coaxed into revealin’; no, it is better not.
But suffice it to say that after a long explanation my companion at last gin in that the man wuz a tellin’ the truth, and it wuz the lower part of a tree-trunk, that growed once near the Yo Semity valley of California. Good land! good land!
Josiah drove on quick after the man explained it, he felt meachin’, but I didn’t notice his linement so much, I wuz so deep in thought, and a wonderin’ about it; a wonderin’ how the old tree felt with her feet a restin’ here on strange soil - her withered, dry old feet a standin’ here, as if jest ready to walk away restless like and feverish, a wantin’ to get back by the rushin’ river that used to bathe them feet in the spring overflow of the pure cold mountain water. It seemed to me she felt she was a alien, as if she missed her strong sturdy grand old body, her lofty head that used to peer up over the mountains, and as if some day she wuz a goin’ to set off a walkin’ back, a tryin’ to find ’em.