as light-complected rather than
darksome, and was one of them smooth-faced people that keep their
baird and wiskers cut close, jest as if they'd be very troublesome
if they let 'em grow,--instead of layin' out their face in grass, as
my poor husband that's dead and gone used to say. He was a
well-behaved gentleman at table, only talked a good deal, and pretty
loud sometimes, and had a way of turnin' up his nose when he didn't
like what folks said, that one of my boarders, who is a very smart
young man, said he couldn't stand, no how, and used to make faces
and poke fun at him whenever he see him do it.

He never said a word aginst any vittles that was set before him, but
I mistrusted that he was more partickerlar in his eatin' than he
wanted folks to know of, for I've know'd him make believe to eat,
and leave the vittles on his plate when he didn't seem to fancy 'em;
but he was very careful never to hurt my feelin's, and I don't
belief he'd have spoke, if he had found a tadpole in a dish of
chowder. But nothin' could hurry him when he was about his vittles.
Many's the time I've seen that gentleman keepin' two or three of 'em
settin' round the breakfast-table after the rest had swallered their
meal, and the things was cleared off, and Bridget was a-waitin' to
get the cloth away,--and there that little man would set, with a
tumbler of sugar and water,--what he used to call O Sukray,
--a-talkin' and a-talkin',--and sometimes he would laugh, and
sometimes the tears would come into his eyes,--which was a kind of
grayish blue eyes,--and there he'd set and set, and my boy Benjamin
Franklin hangin' round and gettin' late for school and wantin' an
excuse, and an old gentleman that's one of my boarders a-listenin'
as if he wa'n't no older than my Benj. Franklin, and that
schoolmistress settin' jest as if she'd been bewitched, and you
might stick pins into her without her hollerin'. He was a master
hand to talk when he got a-goin'. But he never would have no
disputes nor long argerments at my table, and I liked him all the
better for that; for I had a boarder once that never let nothin' go
by without disputin' of it, till nobody knowed what he believed and
what he didn't believe, only they was pretty sure he didn't believe
the side he was a-disputin' for, and some of 'em said, that, if you
wanted him to go any partickerlar way, you must do with him just as
folks do that drive--well, them obstinate creeturs that squeal so,--
for