Well, to resoom backwards a little. Josiah come in in about haif an hour. The mair had started back straight for home. That mair has a constant heart under her white hide, and she’d left children there and grandchildren, I didn’t blame the mair, though I pitied my poor Josiah, he wuz beat out. He said that if it hadn’t been for Tom Willis he never should have ketched her at all. But that didn’t surprise me any, for Tom Willis is one of the kind who always will find a way to do anything he sets out to. So he had helped Josiah ketch the mair.
They wuz dretful glad to have us there, it had been more than a year since we had been there to stay any, and now we laid out to stay two days and nights, and they wuz tickled. But as glad as they’d been to see us, when that long, slim feller come walkin’ in, if you’ll believe it, Tamer Ann Allen actually seemed gladder to see him and made more on him than she did of Josiah and me, it wuz a sight to see it go on.
It seemed that when that old young chap come down into that neighborhood he put up to the hotel to Zoar, and then would walk over to Hamenses, and be there day in and day out, and stay jest as long as he could. He liked Anna as well as he could like anything outside of his old bones and ancestors and things, and I didn’t wonder at it, for her fresh young beauty must have been attractive to him, and a sort of a welcome change from his own looks and dry bones and family trees and such.
But I see she didn’t care anything about him, and I didn’t blame her; good land! I thought to myself I could easier git up a sentimental attachment to a good new telegraph pole, for that would be kinder fresh and hemlocky. But Tamer bowed down before him as if he wuz pure gold. His name wuz Von Winklstein Von Crankerstone, or I guess that’s it. I can’t be sure even to this late day that I have got the name down right, all the Vons and Winkles and things in their right places. But I have done the best I could, and no man or woman can do more.
Tamer didn’t like it, because I couldn’t git his name right when she introduced him, and I guess I did stumble round considerable amongst them Dutch syllables. But Tamer didn’t like it, for in apology for my shortcomin’s I mentioned Dutch. And she sez out in the back kitchen, where I followed her, to apologize:
“You speak of his bein’ Dutch; why,” sez she, “Josiah Allen’s wife, he is from one of the oldest families in the country, he is a descendant of the Poltroons who settled on the Hudson in Colonial days.”
“Is that so, Tamer?” sez I. “And is a Poltroon any better for bein’ a old one than a young one?”
And she sez, “I didn’t say Poltroon.” And she went on to explain, but it wuz sunthin’ that sounded jest like it. Well, he stayed till after dinner, and then he went off, much to Anna’s relief, I could see plain. But Tamer acted real disappointed, and urged him warm to come agin soon, which he promised to do ready enough. He wuz comin’ back the next week, I believe; he had found some new old graves somewhere that he wanted to identify and claim, if possible. It beats all how fond he wuz of cemeteries. But, then, he had a good deal the look of a tall slim monument himself.
He bid us all good-by in a real polite way, but agin, when I tried to speak his name in farewell, I struggled round and fell helpless amongst the ruins of them syllables.
Why, it beats all the time I had with ’em, and to eppisode forward a little. A few weeks afterwards, when the Poltroon wuz there on another visit, they wuz to our house to tea. He wanted to look in the Jonesville cemetery, so they stopped to our house on their way back. And Thomas J. and his folks, and Tom Willis and Elder Minkley all happened to be spendin’ the afternoon there, and I shall never forgit the names I called that Poltroon trying to introduce him. Why, I called him by more than forty different names, I’ll bet; I strugglin’ and wrestlin’ as you may say among the Vons and Crinkles and etcetery, tryin’ hard to do my very best by him and the other visitors and myself.