should love Von Crank or Von Crank love him. They hain't attached to each other at all, anybody could see that at the most casual glance. To see Von Crank try to patronize Tom and couldn't, and to see Tom say the dryest, provokinest things to Von Crank in a polite way and Von Crank writhin' under 'em, but too genteel to say anything back. It wuz a strange seen. And to see Anna by all her lovin' looks dotin' on Tom, and Tom's silent, stiddy devotion to her, and Tamer Ann's efforts to git 'em apart and still keep genteel—why, it wuz as good as any performance that wuz ever performed in a circus, and so I told Josiah afterwards.
Tom tried hard to act manly and upright, and that always effects me powerful. To see a young man blowed on by such blasts of passion, such a overmasterin' love and longin', and still standin' up straight and not gittin' blowed over by 'em, it always affects me, I can't help it, I wuz made in jest that way.
Now, after Von Crank got to goin' after Anna, Tamer Ann, as I said before, told Tom Willis to never step his foot in her house agin, and have nothin' to do at all with Anna.
Well, Tom bowed to her, they say, and took his hat right up and left without a word back to her only "good mornin'," it wuz in the mornin' time that she told him. But they say, and I believe it, that his face wuz white as death, even to the lips, and they wuz tremblin', so they say. And mebby he couldn't say anything owin' to the sinkin' of his heart, and mebby it wuz because he wouldn't promise to give her up and didn't want to mad Tamer Ann by contendin' with her. Anyway, they say he didn't say nothin' only jest "good mornin'," and went out.
