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We heard Captain Pharo groan silently; moreover, his pipe had gone out, and he dared not relight it. "I thought you was goin' to tell a new one about the Sacred Cow?" said Miss Pray. "So I will, Jane," said Pershal; "but the fact is, it 's sech a true, sech a solemn an' myster'ous thing, that I fa'rly dread to tackle it!" Belle O'Neill would have gasped, had she dared.
"I never keered so much about money in the bank," said Uncle Coffin, giving me a nudge; "all 't I ever as't for was luck!" But I yearned in secret to know the developments of the Milky Way; especially as the length of time absorbed by Pershal and Miss Pray in walking between the two doors advised me with an only too tragic hint of the marvel and interest I had lost.
"You'd orter see the roads in Californy," said a dark spectre with shifty eyes on the outskirts of the group. "Gold, ain't they, Pershal?" "No, no," said the spectre modestly; "jest common silver-leavin's. Arfter they've made silver dollars they scrape up all the cornder pieces and leavin's, and heave 'em out into the road. They wears down smooth in a little while and shine? Wal "
She kicked the calf of my lame leg convulsively instead. "Thar's been a great many stories," continued Pershal, "about sacred cows. Folks has claimed t' seen 'em. Circuses has claimed t' had 'em: but the fact, an' the solemn fact, is, thar wa'n't never but one Sacred Cow, and that was raised on my farm in Californy.
At which we all, including Pershal and Miss Pray, laughed inordinately, gazing out into the sweet Basin night; and indeed I was even ready to avow with my life that it was a joke of the extremest savor. Even had all Uncle Coffin's sins been known, he would have been forgiven. Captain Leezur put on Vesty's shawl for her: "Sence I'm the han'somest man in the room," he gurgled. "So you are!"
But it transpired that that look of disgust was not for me. It was for Belle O'Neill, who, moved by another inspiration, had thoughtfully abandoned her mouth-harp to creep through the surreptitious channel of the wood-box and learn how Miss Pray and Pershal were progressing in their courting. She returned with a face of excitement. "Be they j'indin' hands, or anything like that?" we asked.
Her mistress, Miss Pray, who notably for some time had been receiving the attentions of Pershal, the man who had been in California, had withdrawn with him, with tacit understanding of apologies, to the kitchen, where they were carrying on their courting, as all good Basins should, undisturbed. The young people were playing a game of forfeits.
'Never mind whether I come from Maine or whether I come from Jaffy, says I, 'I come from sech a quarter of this 'arth as whar' coots is jest coots, says I." "Ye'd orter see the coots in Californy," wailed the voice of the shifty spectre on the outskirts. "Kind o' resemblin' cows in size, ain't they, Pershal?" "No, no; the biggest I ever seen was the size o' Shamgar's tom-turkey; but plenty?
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