The old man never moved, but read away, and occasionally lifted his head and looked round, and Josiah spoke agin a little louder—
“Be you any relative of Bildad Henzy?”
He never noticed my pardner any more’n as if he wuz dirt under his feet, and my pardner got his dander up, and he fairly yelled in the old man’s ears—
“Be you a Henzy?” And bein’ mad, he added, “Dum you! I believe you can hear if you want to.” And he put his hand on the old man’s shoulder to draw his attention to him. And for all the world! if that man wuzn’t wax! Josiah looked meachin’ for as much as four minutes, and I sez—
“I told you to look ahead.”
“You didn’t, nuther,” he snapped out.
“Wall,” sez I, “it wuz words to that effect, and I wouldn’t try to be neighborly agin to-day.”
Sez he, “If I see a man afire I wouldn’t tell him on’t.”
“Wall,” sez I, “he would probble find it out himself; but now,” sez I, “you’d better keep right by me.”
Wall, as I said, we see every noted woman from Queen Victoria back to Eve, I guess; and from the Prince of Wales and his wife and children back to little Cain and Abel—or I presoom Adam’s little boys wuz there, though I don’t remember of seein’ ’em. But there wuz Knights, Barons, Crusaders, Kings, and Emperors, all dressed up in royal robes; the Black Prince, as good a lookin’ young man as I want to see, and Kings Edward and Richard and Henry, and Queens Mary and Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen of Scots, all ready to have her head cut off; and her rosary, on which she had told her prayers those dretful days, slipped through her fingers as much as to say, I am goin’ into a country where I sha’n’t want you any more. And there wuz Marie Antonette—poor creeter! and Anne Boleyn, poor thing! she’d better not married a widdower. And Joan of Arc, noble creeter! I felt real riz up a-lookin’ at her—I always liked her.