“And I guess I would if it hadn’t been for a lady.  There’s a woman in it, nine times out of ten, when a man’s ruined; and the other time there’s a man in it.  If neither one nor t’other’s in it it’s a durned uninterestin’ occurrence, anyhow.  Yes, sir; we come under the double-cross kindness of a female major.

“One night—­Sufferin’ Ichabod! but that was a night.’—­we were jerried to a standstill in one half-hour, or thirty minutes, by the clock.

“Things was slack this evening nobody in the store but Hadds, Keno Jim and me, throwin’ poker dice for cigars, when the door opens and here come Major Pumpey and his wife from the army post.  We were not glad to see the Major.  He was a little, pussy, red-faced, pop-eyed man, pompous as a banty rooster, with black whiskers and a mustache like a cat.  He had a voice on him like barrels rolling in a brewery vault.  It would surprise you quite a little to hear that number ten voice come a-roarin’ out of that number two man.  The Major used to corral everything he wanted and say, ‘Charge it!’ two octaves below a bull’s beller, Bein’ a military person, he was fond of charges; me and Hadds, bein’ plain civilians, weren’t.  We charged it and we charged it, but that there Major’s defenses were impregnerville.  I had told Hadds that the next time Pumpey said ‘Charge it’ I was goin’ to take him at his word, then and there, and rush him along on his ear till I felt better.  But, of course, now his wife was along I couldn’t.

“She was just as different from the Major as anything could be:  a tall, pale, rangey woman, kind-hearted and good-natured as they make ’em, but with a pair of nose-grabber specks, and a way of letting her hands flop at the wrist, whilest she talked in a high gobbley-gobble style, like singin’ a tuneless tune.  They made a pair to draw to.  The Lord only knows what you’d got if you filled.  My!  And the general effect of that lady!  She wore her hair in an omelet, and looked as if she’d been put in her clothes by a boiler explosion.

“There was another powerful difference between them two.  The Major he gazed on the wine when it was any color at all.  He didn’t care so much for decoration as he did for quantity.  He passed his time in bein’ tee’d, tee-heed, or teeterin’.  On the other hand, his lady couldn’t stand plain raw water.  Honest, friends and brothers!  I ain’t stringin’!  I have it on the word of their striker that Mrs. Pumpey couldn’t be induced to take a drink of water unless it was boiled, and as for spirited liquors—­Oh, murder!  Don’t mention it!

“As the Major entered I observed upon his person a kind of uprightness that no sober man ever had, varied with quick little steps sideways, for no good visible reason, and when he comes up to the counter he grabs it with both hands and says, ‘How do—­gla’ meecher—­hot, ain’t it?’

“I admitted it was hot, told him I was glad to meet him, too, and as this last wasn’t no more than a plain lie I asked the lady quick what we could do for her.