“You don't reckon on having any trouble with any of them chaps as you cut out with Jinny?”
John Ashe, rather haughtily, had never thought of that. “I saw Rance hanging round your house the other night, when I took your daughter home; but he gave me a wide berth,” he added carelessly.
“Surely,” said Mr. McClosky, with a peculiar winking of the eye. After a pause, he took a fresh departure from his valise.
“A few words, John, ez between man and man, ez between my daughter's father and her husband who expects to be, is about the thing, I take it, as is fair and square. I kem here to say them. They're about Jinny, my gal.”
Ashe's grave face brightened, to Mr. McClosky's evident discomposure.
“Maybe I should have said about her mother; but, the same bein' a stranger to you, I says naterally, 'Jinny.'”
Ashe nodded courteously. Mr. McClosky, with his eyes on his valise, went on,--
“It is sixteen year ago as I married Mrs. McClosky in the State of Missouri. She let on, at the time, to be a widder,--a widder with one child. When I say let on, I mean to imply that I subsekently found out that she was not a widder, nor a wife; and the father of the child was, so to speak, onbeknowst. Thet child was Jinny--my gal.”
With his eyes on his valise, and quietly ignoring the wholly-crimsoned face and swiftly-darkening brow of his host, he continued,--
“Many little things sorter tended to make our home in Missouri onpleasant. A disposition to smash furniture, and heave knives around; an inclination to howl when drunk, and that frequent; a habitooal use of vulgar language, and a tendency to cuss the casooal visitor,--seemed to pint,” added Mr. McClosky with submissive hesitation “that--she--was--so to speak--quite onsuited to the marriage relation in its holiest aspeck.”
“Damnation! Why didn't”--burst out John Ashe, erect and furious.
“At the end of two year,” continued Mr. McClosky, still intent on the valise, “I allowed I'd get a diworce. Et about thet time, however, Providence sends a circus into thet town, and a feller ez rode three horses to onct. Hevin' allez a taste for athletic sports, she left town with this feller, leavin' me and Jinny behind. I sent word to her, thet, if she would give Jinny to me, we'd call it quits. And she did.”