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Under cover of much scraping of feet and rustling of starched petticoats, Jasperson had assured his mistress that the sweet By-and-by was doubtless a very pleasant place, but that he hoped to meet her often in the immediate future.
"An' I'd be a liar if I denied it," replied Jasperson. "Wal, gen'lemen, I'm obligated to ye. Next Sabbath I'll wade right in." Upon the following Sunday our hero rose betimes, tubbed himself, shaved himself, perfumed his small person with bergamot, and then arrayed it in the ivy-bosomed shirt and the $75 suit of broadcloth. His toilet occupied just two hours and seventeen minutes.
"The whole village," said he, "has been painted by Jasperson a lovely pigeon-blood red!" Then he sat down and laughed in the most uncontrollable and exasperating manner. "By Jupiter!" he gasped; "I knew that whisky was wonderful stuff, but I never believed it could turn a worm into a Malay running amok." Then he laughed again till the tears rolled down his cheeks.
And how could I see the loveliness of your cousins when my eyes were dwelling with rapture upon the stately form of her I trust to call my own? Be mine, dear friend, for I love you and hope to marry you, to part neither here nor in the sweet By-and-by. "Yours respectfully, "Jasper Jasperson. "P.S. Important. The ranch is four hundred and three acres, paid for.
My brother commended the lines as lacking neither rhyme nor reason, but he questioned the propriety of alluding to a lady's appetite, and protested strongly against the use of that abject word worm. He told Jasperson that in comparing himself to a reptile he was slapping the cheeks of his progenitors. "But I do feel like a worm when Miss Birdie's around," objected the man of acres.
We noted the absence of the rosebud, and Jasperson blushingly confessed that he had presented the flower to his best girl after dinner, an act of homage so we presumed in recognition of the lady's contempt of danger in mixing pickled cucumbers with cup-custards. "After that," said Jasperson, "I thought of the album, an' 'twas then my feet begun to get cold.
At the end she invited them to come into the lodge to see a good man I quote her verbatim an upright citizen, a credit to his country and an ornament to society, take the pledge. When she stopped, Jasperson began, in that soft, silky voice of his.
"Jasperson," replied Ajax soberly, "is being removed in a spring-wagon to his own ranch. To-morrow he will be a very sick man, but I think I've got him out of his scrape." "Uncle Jake says," murmured Ajax, "that Laban Swiggart has been 'milking' us ever since we bought this ranch." Laban was our neighbour.
Jasperson came to the ranch at the time of the March branding, and it was well understood between the contracting parties Ajax and I of the first part, and Jasper Jasperson of the second part, all of San Lorenzo County, in the State of California that the said Jasperson came to us as a favour, and, so to speak, under protest.
"Well, if you mean business," said Ajax didactically, "if nothing we can say or do will divert your mind from courtship and matrimony if, my dear Jasperson, you are prepared to exchange the pleasant places, the sunny slopes, and breezy freedom of bachelor life for the thorny path that leads to the altar, and thence to er the cradle, if, in short, you are determined to own a best girl, why, then the first and obvious thing to do is to let her know discreetly that you're in love with her."
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