"None of it at all?"
"None of it at all. Not a lie in it," says I.
"Lay your band on this book and say it."
I see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so I laid my hand on it and said it. So then she looked a little better satisfied, and says:
"Well, then, I'll believe some of it; but I hope to gracious if I'll believe the rest."
"What is it you won't believe, Joe?” says Mary Jane, stepping in with Susan behind her. "It ain't right nor kind for you to talk so to him, and him a stranger and so far from his people. How would you like to be treated so?"
"That's always your way, Maim—always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. I hain't done nothing to him. He's told some stretchers, I reckon; and I said I wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit and grain I did say. I reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can't he?"
"I don't care whether it 'twas little or whether it was big, he's here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. If you was in his place, it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn't to say a thing to another person that will make them feel ashamed."
"Why, Maim, he said—"
"It don't make no difference what he said—that ain't the thing. The thing is for you to treat him kind, and not be saying things to make him remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks."
I says to myself, this is a girl that I'm letting that ole reptle rob her of her money!
Then Susan she waltzed in; and if you'll believe me, she did give Hare-lip hark from the tomb!
Says I to myself, And this is another one that I'm letting him rob her of her money!
