Wall, that raised him dretfully in Ardelia’s eyes; she owned up to me that it did. She owned to me that she lead always thought she would love to be a Banker’s Bride. She thought it sounded rich. She said, “banker sounded so different from baker.”
I sez to her coolly, that “it wuz only a difference of one letter, and I never wuz much of a one to put the letter N above any of the others, or to be haughty on havin’ it added to, or diminished from my name.”
But she kep’ on a goin’ with him. She told me it wuz real romanticle the way he got aquanted with her. He see her onbeknown to her one day, when she wuz a writin’ a poem on one of the benches in the park.
“A Poem on a Bench!”
She wuz a settin’ on the bench, and a writin’ about it, she was a writin’ on the bench in two different ways. Curius, haint it?
But to resoom. He immegetly fell in love with her. And he got a feller who wuz a boardin’ to his boardin’ place to interduce him to Ardelia’s relative, Mr. Pixley, and Mr. Pixley interduced him to Ardelia. He told Ardelia’s relatives the same story - That his father wuz a banker, that he owned a bank and wuz doin’ a heavy business.
Wall, I watched that young chap, and watched him close, and I see there wuz one thing about him that could be depended on, he wuz truthful.
He seemed almost morbid on the subject, and would dispute himself half a hour, to get a thing or a story he wuz tellin’ jest exactly right. But he drinked; that I know for I know the symptoms. Coffee can’t blind the eyes of her that waz once Smith, nor peppermint cast a mist before ’em. My nose could have took its oath, if noses wuz ever put onto a bar of Justice - my nose would have gin its firm testimony that Bial Flamburg drinked.
And there wuz that sort of a air about him, that I can’t describe exactly - a sort of a half offish, half familier and wholly disagreeable mean, that can be onderstood but not described. No, you can’t picture that liniment, but you can be affected by it. Wall, Bial had it.
And I kep’ on a not likin’ him, and kep’ stiddy onwards a likin’ Abram Gee. I couldn’t help it, nor did’nt want to. And I looked out constant to ketch him in some big story that would break him right down in Ardelia’s eyes, for I knew if she had been brought up on any one commandment more’n another, it wuz the one ag’inst lyin’. She hated lyin’.