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Updated: June 26, 2025
"Well, that's something so," said Whitwell, with pleasure in the distinction rather than assent. "But I guess it ain't original sin in the boy. Got it from his gran'father pootty straight, I should say, and maybe the old man had it secondhand. Ha'd to say just where so much cussedness gits statted."
"Feels pootty lively to-night," said Whitwell, with a glance at Westover. The little Canuck, as if he had now no further concern in the matter, sat down in a corner and smoked silently. Whitwell asked, after a moment's impatience: "Can't you git her down to business, Jackson?" Jackson gasped: "She'll come down when she wants to." The little instrument seemed, in fact, trying to control itself.
When a hotel's made a bad season, and she's fully insured, she's pootty certain to burn up some time in the winter. Everybody knows that comical devil wanted lion's Head to burn up so 't he could build new, and I presume there a'n't a man, woman, or child anywhere round but what believes I set her on fire. Hired to do it. Now, see?
"Well, it's a pootty plain case, that's a fact," Whitwell conceded. She was silent, and he asked: "How did he come to tell you?" "It's what he came up for. He began to tell me at once. I was certain there was some trouble." "Was it his notion to come, I wonder, or Mr. Westover's?" "It was his. But Mr. Westover told him to break off with me, and keep on with her, if she would let him."
The farmer said, "Long, red-headed man, kind of sickly-lookin'?" "We didn't see the man " "Little woman, skinny-lookin; pootty tonguey?" "We didn't see her, eitha; but I guess we hea'd her at the back of the house." "Lot o' children, about as big as pa'tridges, runnin' round in the bushes?" "Yes! And a very pretty-appearing girl; about thi'teen or fou'teen, I should think."
It was known for a fact that he was in with them Secesh devils up over the line that was plannin' a raid into Vermont in '63. He'd got pootty low down by that time; railroads took off all the travel; tavern 'd got to be a regular doggery; old man always drank some, I guess. That was a good while after his girl had married Durgin.
My folks used to live around there, and I can remember when I was a boy hangin' around the bar-room nights hearin' him argue that colored folks had no souls; and along about the time the fugitive- slave law was passed the folks pootty near run him out o' town for puttin' the United States marshal on the scent of a fellow that was breakin' for Canada. Well, it was just so when the war come.
"His father's father?" asked Westover, willing to humor Whitwell's evident wish to philosophize the Durgins' history. "Mother's. He kept the old tavern stand on the west side of Lion's Head, on the St. Albans Road, and I guess he kept a pootty good house in the old times when the stages stopped with him. Ever noticed how a man on the mean side in politics always knows how to keep a hotel?
He twisted his head in the direction he meant. "This is my first season at Middlemount; but I guess Mr. Atwell will know." The clerk called to the landlord, who was smoking in his private room behind the office, and the landlord came out. The clerk repeated Mr. Lander's questions. "Pootty good kind of folks, I guess," said the landlord provisionally, through his cigar-smoke.
"Mais j'adore les bonbons, moi," said the little Sylphide, with a queer, piteous look. "I can buy a hatful at Fortnum and Mason's for a guinea. And it shall have its bonbons, its pootty little sugar-plums, that it shall," Pen said, with a bitter smile. "Nay, my dear, nay my dearest little Blanche, don't cry.
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