“If you were in a hard place, Mrs. Stickney, and needed advice, would you go to Zaanan Frame?”
“I’d hitch up and go at a gallop,” she said.
“That,” said Jim, “is about what I think I’ll do.”
Jim rapped on the door of Zaanan Frame’s office. At the last minute he had been of two minds whether he should go in or pass on about his business. The sound of his own knuckles on the panel decided him.
Jim entered and saw the old justice sitting behind his desk, a sheep-bound volume propped up before him. Over the top of this a pair of sharp blue eyes shaded by bushy eyebrows, each of which would have gladdened the heart of an ambitious young roan could he have had it for a mustache, peered at Jim.
“You’ve made it pretty evident,” Jim said, stiffly, “that you don’t like me. I can’t say I have felt any uncontrollable affection for you—”
“Whoa there!” said Zaanan, closing his book, Tiffany’s _Justices’ Guide_, which he maintained to be the greatest contribution to human knowledge, especially of the law, since Moses received the tablets of stone. “Young feller, if you hain’t too young to learn, lemme tell you it’s possible to ketch more flies with maple sugar than you kin with stummick bitters. Jest smooth down the hair along your back and don’t go walkin’ round me stiff-legged like a dog lookin’ for a fight.” Zaanan’s eyes twinkled. “Now, then, set and onbosom yourself.”
“I’ve come to see you, Judge, because I have been assured that friend or enemy can trust you—”
“The Widder Stickney’s been flappin’ her wings and cacklin’,” observed Zaanan. “Um! I figgered you’d be to see me—or else you wouldn’t. Gittin’ ready to kick out, but you need a wall to lean against, eh?”
“Kick out? What makes you think I’m getting ready to kick out? And at whom?”
“‘Whom,’” quoted Zaanan. “I’ve heard of that there word. It’s grammar, hain’t it, but I dun’no’s I ever expected to hear it spoke in Diversity. How’s the meals to the widder’s?”
“Very good, indeed,” said Jim, nonplussed.
“You hain’t the only boarder, I hear tell.”
“I want to know,” said Zaanan, his eyes twinkling again. “Makes it pleasanter, I calc’late—you two young folks together.”
“I think Miss Ducharme could bear up under the blow if I were to board some place else.”