"Oh, I—I guess so! Yes! of course!" she answered variously, and rushed off home.
"You know I own you," she laughed back, as if she had not been sufficiently explicit. "I paid for you! Your pappy's got the money! I'll expect my property to-night."
"Yas!" shouted the happy old man, "and begoshens! it's a reg'lar bargain! Ain't it, Seffy? You her property—real estate, hereditaments and tenements." And even Seffy was drawn into the joyous laughing conceit of it! Had he not just done the bravest thing of his small life?
"Yes!" he cried after the fascinating Sally. "For sure and certain, to-night!"
"It's a bargain!" cried she.
"For better or worser, richer or poorer, up an' down, in an' out, chassez right and left! Aha-ha-ha! Aha-ha-ha! But, Seffy,"—and the happy father turned to the happy son and hugged him, "don't you efer forgit that she's a feather-head and got a bright red temper like her daddy! And they both work mighty bad together sometimes. When you get her at the right place onct—well, nail her down—hand and feet—so's she can't git away. When she gits mad her little brain evaporates, and if she had a knife she'd go round stabbing her best friends—that's the only sing that safes her—yas, and us!—no knife. If she had a knife it would be funerals following her all the time."
II
They advanced together now, Seffy's father whistling some tune that was never heard before on earth, and, with his arm in that of his son, they watched Sally bounding away. Once more, as she leaped a fence, she looked laughingly back. The old man whistled wildly out of tune. Seffy waved a hand!
"Now you shouting, Seffy! Shout ag'in!"
"I didn't say a word!"