“Anna, if you will only be as good as you look, you will git along first rate.” As I sez to her anon or oftener, “Handsome is that handsome duz.”
And she sez, “That is jest what Aunt Judith always said, Aunt Samantha.”
But I’d look at her all the time with that admirin’, appreciative look on my eyebrow that she knew, the witch, jest how pretty I thought she wuz (and I not helpin’ it to save my life). Yes, Anna liked me dretful well, which wuzn’t so strange when one comes to think how well I liked her. And she told me right out plain and square that her feelin’s towards that young Von Crank wuz almost murderous, and she owned up to me that sometimes when he wuz standin’ up so straight and stiff she wuz tempted to tip him over, and sez she, “I don’t believe he would bend at all, but fall right over straight like a clothes pin or a telegraph pole.”
“Well,” sez I, “don’t try to do that in the parlor, Anna, for if it is so, think of the damage he would do to the furniture on the other side of the room.” And I guess I kinder got her mind offen it. But she sez, “You can’t bear him yourself, Aunt Samantha, and I know it.”
“Well, dear,” sez I, “everybody has their own station house in life to fill, and I spoze he has his, or else why should he have a station house?”
Sez she, “He needn’t come round me with his mouldy old compliments, for I would rather live with Tom Willis on bread and water than with him in a palace.”
Anna loves Tom, loves him as she duz her eyes, and as I say, Hamenses wife had invited him there and let ’em grow up together like a mornin’ glory vine round the pillow of a porch, never sayin’ a word aginst their bein’ together, never noticin’ that under the divine spring of youth and love her heart’s tendrils wuz puttin’ out livin’ branches and twinin’ round the pillow of his steadfast devotion, jest as firmly and jest as onbeknown to her as the vines she had planted wuz twinin’ round their supports in the spring and summer of the year.
She waited, Tamer did, till the heart’s tendrils wuz wropped so completely round the heart of Tom Willis that nothin’ but death could ontwine ’em (and I don’t believe that death can, nor Josiah don’t). But, howsumever, at this time Tamer Ann stepped in and begun to tear ’em off. Just because Tom wuz poor, or that is poor in money, for he wuz rich in all the qualities that go to make a young man wealthy in himself, and there wuzn’t any doubt that he would be rich in money in a few years the way he wuz going on now. But his family wuz poor but pious, and Von Crank wuz rich. And Tamer begun to tell me the very next mornin’ after I got there what a great family he had descended from.
And I sez, “How big!”
And she sez, “One of the greatest families in the State.”