“Don’t you suppose I know that you’re courtin’ that tow-headed widder that’s got a farm and twenty thousand dollars in the bank? Do you think that you can fool me that’s summered and wintered with you? You’re courtin’ her, that’s what you’re doin’, and you’re layin’ it all off onto that elephant. Now don’t give me no more flim-flam. ’Tain’t professional. It’s pickin’ me up for a sucker.” The narrow eyes of the giant sparkled with suspicion and with the jealousy of the companion who is being supplanted and realises it. For a little while Hiram stood and glared at him and then sat down in his chair again. Either a sense of guilt, craft or desire to placate a friend caused him to moderate his demeanour. “See here, Sime,” he began, lighting a cigar to keep himself in countenance, “you have figgered the thing all wrong. You know I ain’t a marryin’ man. You and me neither of us is. I want you to live with me and you’re goin’ to.” “I should think that the both of us has suffered enough from women as it is,” grumbled the giant. “Both of us knows the other’s troubles with ’em. And now for you to go and ram yourself right into the bramble-bush again, and me here to advise you, makes me mad and disgusted. I’m thinkin’ of you first of all, Hime. I ain’t selfish. But I can see jest how it’s goin’ to be: you’re goin’ to git hitched and then the first thing she’ll do will be to put the spittoon in the woodshed and kick me out-doors. I thought you knowed more than to do it--I honest thought so.” Peak bowed his head in grief. “In my whole life long I never was judged right yet by any human bein’,” wailed Hiram. “And now here you go off the handle jest like the rest. _You_ know what Nymp’ Bodfish done to me. _You_ know what I propose to do to Nymp’ Bodfish. That’s all there is to it. He wants her and the twenty thousand, and he’d ’a’ had her a year ago if he wasn’t hangin’ off about bein’ a farmer. He wants her to sell and put the money into a schooner, and he’s jest as much reckonin’ on that as on flood tide when the moon’s right. His heart is set on it. I’m goin’ to make him the sickest man ’tween here and the North Pole.” “There was a man once that give an elephant a chaw of terbacker,” related Simon, “and when the doctors was tryin’ to fit some of the least mussed-up pieces together at the hospital, he opened his eyes and said: ‘It was a good one on the elephant, wasn’t it?’ and then give one hiccup and died.” “If you was only jest--well, say, ‘Figger-Four,’ and made such talk to me,” snarled Hiram, “I’d drive you right down through the floor there, like I’d drive a tent peg. But I’m willin’ to argue with _you_, Sime, and if that don’t show that I’m a friend of yours, then I don’t know what does.” He wiped his flushed face. “You understand, I can’t bust this thing in a minit.” “Didn’t you yourself ketch him right in a caper that would queer him with any decent woman--lug-gin’ off another man’s wife ’cause he was hired to?”