Chapter 18

CHAPTER XVIII.

COL. GRANGERFORD was a gentleman, you see.
He was a gentleman all over; and so was his
family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that's
worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the
Widow Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she
was of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap he
always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality
than a mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall
and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not
a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean shaved
every morning all over his thin face, and he had the
thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils,
and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest
kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like
they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may
say. His forehead was high, and his hair was black
and straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands
was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on
a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made
out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it;
and on Sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass
buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a
silver head to it. There warn't no frivolishness about
him, not a bit, and he warn't ever loud. He was as
kind as he could be -- you could feel that, you know,
and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled,
and it was good to see; but when he straightened him-
self up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to
flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to
climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was
afterwards. He didn't ever have to tell anybody to
mind their manners -- everybody was always good-
mannered where he was. Everybody loved to have
him around, too; he was sunshine most always -- I
mean he made it seem like good weather. When he
turned into a cloudbank it was awful dark for half a
minute, and that was enough; there wouldn't nothing
go wrong again for a week.

When him and the old lady come down in the morn-
ing all the family got up out of their chairs and give
them good-day, and didn't set down again till they had
set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard
where the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters
and handed it to him, and he held it in his hand and
waited till Tom's and Bob's was mixed, and then they
bowed and said, "Our duty to you, sir, and madam;"
and THEY bowed the least bit in the world and said
thank you, and so they drank, all three, and Bob and
Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the
mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their
tumblers, and give it to me and Buck, and we drank to
the old people too.

Bob