course the tendency is, our identities might become confused. I hope
this will be understood when I report him as saying things in ways one
doesn't word them. I mean to say that it should not be thought that I
would say them in this way if it chanced that I were saying the same
things in my proper person. I fancy this should now be plain.

"Very well, sir," I said.

"If it was me," he went on, "I wouldn't want you a little bit. But
it's Her. She's got her mind made up to do the right thing and have us
all be somebody, and when she makes her mind up----" He hesitated and
studied the ceiling for some seconds. "Believe me," he continued,
"Mrs. Effie is some wildcat!"

"Yes, sir--some wildcat," I repeated.

"Believe _me_, Bill," he said again, quaintly addressing me by a
name not my own--"believe me, she'd fight a rattlesnake and give it
the first two bites."

Again let it be recalled that I put down this extraordinary speech
exactly as I heard it. I thought to detect in it that grotesque
exaggeration with which the Americans so distressingly embellish their
humour. I mean to say, it could hardly have been meant in all
seriousness. So far as my researches have extended, the rattlesnake is
an invariably poisonous reptile. Fancy giving one so downright an
advantage as the first two bites, or even one bite, although I believe
the thing does not in fact bite at all, but does one down with its
forked tongue, of which there is an excellent drawing in my little
volume, "Inquire Within; 1,000 Useful Facts."