“I’ll give that fryer a piece of my mind!” and before I interfered he yelled out:
“You may keep right on with your fryin’; I won’t stir a step inside if Samantha can’t come too. I’ll let you know that any place that’s too good for her is too good for me. Keep right on with your fryin’, your bull beef will probble spile if it hain’t cooked!”
I ketched him by his vest, and sez I: “Pause, Josiah Allen. He hain’t a cook; it is a F-r-i-a-r.”
“How do you spoze I care how you spell it? You can spell their bull-fights b-o-u-l if you want to; that don’t hender ’em from havin’ to take care of their fresh beef. Keep right on a-fryin’!” sez he in bitter mockery. “My Samantha hain’t probble good enough to see a little beef a-fryin’; but,” sez he, waxin’ eloquent, as, animated by the power of love, he stood up nobly for me—
“You can fry all day and think you go ahead of any woman, and be too proud to let ’em see you at it; but Samantha’s cookin’ is as fur ahead of yours as the United States is bigger than Spain. And I’d ruther have one of Samantha’s steaks that she cooks than all the beef that you ever killed at your dum bull-fights. And don’t you forgit it!” he hollered, as the driver drove away by my almost frenzied directions.
He sunk back exhausted on his seat as we swep’ on. And you can jedge of his agitation when I say that he threw out three copper cents all to one time to the swarm of ragged beggars that run along by the side of the carriage. He threw ’em out mekanically, and as if he didn’t know what he wuz about. Ah! the insult to me rankled deep in his noble but small-sized frame. He didn’t git over it all that night. I always knew he loved me deeply—I knew it in Jonesville, and I knew it in Spain. But oh! how touchin’ the proof wuz that he gin to me as his voice rung out in the vast, lonesome bareness of our chamber in Bruges, Spain, as he lifted his hand in mockery, and cried out:
“Keep right on with your fryin’; you won’t git me to eat a mou’ful while Samantha is hungry!”
Oh, the power of love! How it gilds with its rosy rays the quiet ways of Jonesville! How it still shone on and shed its ambient light in a foreign land! But I gently hunched him and woke him up, for I see it wuz endin’ in nightmair.
I wuz too overcome by a deep sense of his nobility of sentiment in my behaff to argy with him that day. I felt that it would be ongrateful in me; and then, agin, I felt that he wuz too overcome by the greatness of his emotions—I knew his frame wuz but small, and his devoted affection and his righteous anger mighty. I dassent add another single emotion to them he wuz already a-carryin’—no, I dassent venter. But I talked soothin’ly all the evenin’, and said not a upbraidin’ word when his nightmair snorted and waked me up with its prancin’ huffs.
No; I, too, am a devoted pardner, and know when to talk and when to keep silence. That is a great nack for pardners to learn—one of the greatest and most neccessary.