Page:Orange Grove.djvu/144

 "A match for me! ha, I'd like to serve a joke on him fust rate. But he ain't one o' these familiar sort o' folks that you don't mind speakin' to any time. I always feel as if I must stand on ceremony when I'm speakin' to him."

"I am glad if there is anybody you stand in deference to. It's a pity you couldn't be in awe of him all the time, and be brought into some kind of system."

"I hope you don't think I'm afraid of him. With eyes as gentle as a purrin' cat's, he makes a body feel when he's lookin' at 'em so kind o' soft and tender that they don't want to use any rough words. But I'd like to have him try his hand on me to bring me into system, wouldn't I have a gay time."

"No danger of his trying. He knows it would be a hopeless task."

"I 'spose you think I'm too awfully depraved to have any hopes of. It tickles me to see these folks that pretend to be saints, when I guess if they could show their 'count books they'd find some as big sins set down agin 'em as ever I did. Why there's your aunt, I know all about her for I lived next house to her 'fore you ever see her, and I think you must have been pretty near a saint to live with her as you did, she was a perfect torment to her husband and he was ditto, and so that wan't no matter. Now seein' you like to puzzle over such things, which do you think is most christian like, to take this world fat and easy as I do, and the next world for all the good we can get out of it; or, I don't know much about what's in the Bible, but I believe there's a sort