"For nine years," says I.

"Cut him out," says she. "He's no gentleman!"

"Why ma'am," says I, "he's a plain incumbent of the mountains, with
asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I
never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was
a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance
and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma'am, I've found him
impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years
of Idaho's society, Mrs. Sampson," I winds up, "I should hate to
impute him, and I should hate to see him imputed."

"It's right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "to take
up the curmudgeons in your friend's behalf; but it don't alter the
fact that he has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle
the ignominy of any lady."

"Why, now, now, now!" says I. "Old Idaho do that! I could believe it
of myself, sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a
blizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snow-bound in the
mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry,
which may have corrupted his demeanour."

"It has," says Mrs. Sampson. "Ever since I knew him he has been
reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls
Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by her
poetry."

"Then Idaho has struck a new book," says I, "for the one he had was by
a man who writes under the /nom de plume/ of K. M."

"He'd better have stuck to it," says Mrs. Sampson, "whatever it was.
And to-day he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and
on 'em is pinned a note. Now, Mr. Pratt, you know a lady when you see
her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a
moment that I'd skip out to the woods with a man along with a jug of
wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down
under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but
I'm not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising
Cain in any such style as that. And of course he'd bring his book of
verses along, too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics
alone! Or let him take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldn't
kick unless it was on account of there being too much bread along. And
what do you think of your gentleman friend now, Mr. Pratt?"

"Well, 'm," says I, "it may be that Idaho's invitation was a kin