“Never mind—I’ll show you—no man that married Billy Stearns’s daughter can carry on in the way you’ve been doin’, without my interferin’ for the intrust of the family!”
Suggs said this with an earnestness, a sternness, that completely vanquished Pullum. He tremulously asked:
“How did you know that I married Stearns’s daughter?”
“That’s a fact ’most anybody could have known that was intimate with the family in old times. You’d better ask how I knowed that you tuk your wife’s cotton to Wetumpka—sold it—got on a spree—after Sally give you a caution too—and then came by here, got on another spree. What do you reckon Sally will say to you when you get home?”
“She won’t know it,” replied Pullum, “unless somebody tells her.”
“Somebody will tell her,” said Suggs, “I’m going home with you as soon as you’ve had breakfast. My poor Sally Rugby shall not be trampled on in this way. I’ve only got to borrow fifty dollars from some of the boys, to make out a couple of thousand. I need to make the last payment on my land. So go over and eat your breakfast quick.”
“For God’s sake, Sir, don’t tell Sally about it; you don’t know how unreasonable she is.”
Pullum was the incarnation of misery.
“The divil I don’t! she bit this piece out of my face,” here Suggs pointed to a scar on his cheek, “when I had her on my lap a little girl only five years old. She was always game.”
Pullum grew more nervous at this reference to his wife’s mettle.