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 detested him) kep' tellin' him all the time that she would be all right in time, it wuz only a girl's shyness, etc., etc. So he kep' on comin', and Anna kep' on shunnin' him all she could, and Tamer Ann kep' on naggin', and so it went on. Hamen and John didn't seem to pay so much attention to this domestic side show, for all their leisure moments, when they wuz in the house, would be took up foolin' Jack, tellin' him strange stories, drawin' him on to talk strange about 'em, and then laughin' at him. And Jack would meach off, feelin' all used up and humiliated, and they snickerin', the fools! There wuz more sense in Jack's little finger than in their hull long bodies, and so I told Josiah.

Oh, how it incensed me to see it, and the incense grew stronger every time I went there. Tamer Ann had got holt of a hull chest of old dime novels that had fell to her from a distant relative. He wuz jest sent to prison, bein' a forger and a arson, and, as it wuz for life, why this chest fell onto his relations, and as the rest didn't want the novels, why Tamer Ann got 'em.

This relation who owned 'em had had a large family who doted on the novels, but they had most on 'em been transported for life or hung, or sunthin' of that sort. His wife had long before run away with another man, she had worshipped the novels while she lived in the house with 'em, but she had run clear away out of sight, so Tamer Ann got 'em, as I say, and oh! how she and Cicero gloated over 'em and devoured 'em. Anna didn't care for them, good land! she had a romance in her own heart that took up all her time and tears, poor thing! Jack wuzn't old enough for 'em. As for Hamen and his brother, they could tell their own lies, good land! they didn't need the novels, so Tamer had the hull run on 'em herself, she and Cicero.