He might have said enough. Good land! if I had been there I could have told him lots of things to say.
He might have said, "It is pretty late in the day to ask me to give her up when she is right inside my heart and soul, and I should have to tear 'em both open to git her out. It is pretty late in the day to interfere when you have seen Anna and I playmates from childhood. When you've seen us grow up side by side, all through our happy youth to manhood and womanhood. When you've encouraged us to be together at all times and all places, trusted her to my care hundreds and hundreds of times all these years. Have looked on calmly and seen, for you must have seen, how our hearts wuz growing together, how our lives wuz gittin' completely bound up in one another. After you have sot quietly and allowed all this, now because a richer, more fashionable suitor asks for Anna you think you will take her away from me, from the one that holds her by the divine right of love, and give her to one she does not belong to. It shows either a criminal carelessness on your part, a criminal neglect, or worse."
That's about the way I should have talked if I had been Tom Willis. But he didn't, he jest walked out and shet the door, not slammin' it, or nothin', and—and kep' right on livin'. Never made no threats about killin' himself, never boasted, as might be spozed he would, it is so common under the same circumstances, that he had got sick of her, and, in fact, wuz so popular among the wimmen that he had to slight some on 'em now and then, no, Tom never said anything of all this, but jest kep' right on with his work in a manly, stiddy way, growin' kinder pale and still for a spell, but at last sort o' brightenin' up and havin' a new and stead-
