Now, in a debate, no man is supposed to have friends or relations, and
he floors his man with anything that comes handy, and Hank never dreamed
that Hen would hold hardness when he got over his mad fit. Hank and
Fanny had things all fixed up, and had been pricing things at the Banner
Store, and sitting up as late as two o'clock; but the next Sunday night
she met him at the door and told him maybe he'd better not come into the
sitting-room till her pa cooled off. Hank was knocked off his feet, and
they stood out in the hall talking sort of tragic until old Hen yelled
"Fanny!" from the sitting-room, and they pretty near jumped out of their
skins, and stood farther apart, and Fanny went in. In the spring there
was a row over the line fence, ending in a devil's lane. Fanny looked
pretty blue, only when she was fighting with her pa. Hen would lecture
about the two Peters brothers that came across in 1720, and how all
Peterses that were not descended from them were Nimshies and impostors.
"I despise and hate," says he, "a Nimshi and an impostor."
Then Fanny would shoot back a remark about the Iowa _Herald's_ college,
and when was her pa going to paint the Peters coat-of-arms on the
hay-rake and the hog-house, using sarcasm that no man could understand
after being out of school as long as her father had been. Sometimes the
old man would forget the spurious registry of the Hank family in the
Peters herd-book, and would argue that relations, even the most remote
and back-fence kind, ought to be prosecuted if they even dreamed of
marrying; and then Fanny would say that it is such a pleasure to know
that folks are not always related when they claim to be. Hen would then
cuss me for not taking care of my horses' shoulders or something, and
things would get no better rapidly.
Young folks need to meet once in a while in order to keep right with
each other, and Jim Miller and I often spoke of the way old Hen was
splitting Hank and Fanny apart. Then an Illinois man come out and bought
Hank out at a hundred an acre, and Hank wadded his money into his
pocket, and bid good-by to the neighborhood for good and all. He never
crossed the township line again. Fanny flirted like sixty, and cried
when she was alone; but old Hen was as tickled as a colt.
It seemed like a judgment on Hen for driving as good a man as Hank to
Dakota to have Fillmore Smythe begin yelping on his trail. His first
yelp was a letter, asking Hen to call and pay a three-hundred-dollar
note Fillmore had for collection. And here's where the law begins to
seep into the story. Hen had Fanny type-write a scorching answer, saying
that Hen Peters had discounted his bills since before Fillmore Smythe
was unfortunately born, and didn't owe no man a cent; and Hen was so mad
that he kicked a fifty-dollar collie pup, and hurt its feelings so it
never would work, but went to killing young pigs and sheep the way a
collie will if you ever sour their nature by licking them. Funny about
collies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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