Yes, Jesse is hard to manage, but presently he remembered about the check, which made him for the first time in his life feel rich. He's too rough when I let him love me. Indeed I had to do up my hair in the dark, though the fireflies offered the dearest little lamps. Besides a little jealousy is good for Jesse. I should not like to see his love go hungry.
III
Last night Jesse came home from Vancouver, and it being Sunday evening, he read and expounded the Scriptures to the amazement of the three new ranch-hands. The Chinamen, being heathens, were let off.
"Not being wise in the ways of high society, I ain't free to comment on Mrs. Potiphar, who kep' a steward instead of doing her job as housekeeper, or on this General Sir Something Potiphar, C.O.D., C.P.R., H.B.C., P.D.Q., commanding the Haw-Haw Guards, who seems to neglect his missus. As a plain stockman I pursues after Joseph."
By this time three godless cow-punchers, crimson with suppressed emotions, were digging one another fiercely in the ribs.
"This here Joseph is a sheep-herding swine from the desert, smooth because he's been brung up among range animals, but mean because he's raised for a pet by Jacob, the champion stinker of the wild west."
At that Pete exploded, and had to retire in convulsions, while the other two infants reproached him for interruption.
"Smooth and mean is Joseph, a cream-laid young person like Pete, who's going to have black draft to heal his cough before morning. Joseph is all deportment and sad eyes, with a crossed-in-love droop. His brothers is mean so far as they knows how without reading newspapers, but even they can't stand Joseph. General and Mrs. Potiphar don't seem to like his perfume. When he's in jail he's steward, so that the other prisoners has dreams of grub but nary a meal till he goes.
"I dunno, but if I was a self-made man, I'd hate to have my autobiography wrote by my poor relations, or the backers I'd cheated and left on my trail to Fifth Avenue. Them brethren, the Potiphar outfit, and the jailbirds, is plumb full of grief that they ever seen this Joseph, and you'll notice that when he dies, the Egyptians don't subscribe for a monument. He's a city man, a financier, and the Lord is with him, watching his natural history, this being the first warning of the plagues of Egypt.
"Thar's only one man as can afford to know the Honorable Joseph. Pharaoh has an ax, so any gent caught with more'n four aces, is apt to fade away out of Egypt. Yes, he can afford to know Joseph, and they're birds of a feather all right.