“Oh, leave them alone,” says she. “Mr. Edmund, you’ll just make ’em worse.”
But he was in for an argument. He settled those eyes of his on her with his regular May-God-have-mercy-on-your-soul expression, and he told her she’d ought to know better. But she didn’t mind him any more’n I did. She liked him.
“You know as well as I do,” says he, “that children should be an improvement on their parents, especially when those parents come from Texas. Texas is a large place,” he goes on, “and I am willin’ to believe that it contains thousands of enlightened and refined persons—but they don’t come here. If your scholars don’t learn to read and write, where’s any progress to come from?”
“Well, Mr. Edmund,” says she, “all I know is that you will never help me, or the school-house, or progress, by calling Kultus Jake and Frisco Baldy a pair of inspected and condemned mules to their faces.”
I didn’t know he’d called ’em that. Must have been outside the store somewheres. Edmund could turn his tongue wrong-side-out when he felt like it. “That’s what they are,” says he, laughin’ at his own words, which he had forgotten. “But as for this valley, it was inhabited by better citizens when the wild animals lived here. I prefer a black-tailed deer to a Texan. Don’t waste your money on those chocolates, Miss Carey.”
“Why, what’s wrong with them?” says she, with the box in her hand.
“There’s no chocolate in ’em,” says Edmund. “The wholesale house cheated me. I’d send ’em back, but I’d sold too much before I found out. This candy here,” says he, showin’ her some more, “seems to be what it claims to be.”
And then, while she seemed to hesitate over the chocolates, what do y’u suppose he does? Takes the box sudden out of her hand, walks out to the river bank and throws the whole outfit plop into the water!
“Isn’t that just like him!” says she to me, very quiet, while he was out on the bank. And it was. Yes, Edmund is the only fool I ever loved.
She kept starin’ out at him, and in a minute we heard the noise of a boat bein’ rowed acrost the Thowmet. Edmund he stands watchin’ whoever it was below. Next minute up the bank comes Kultus Jake.