Dannys Own Story | Page 4

getting onto his feet, like he always
done when he seen trouble coming. When Old Hank was full of licker
he knowed jest the ways to aggervate her the worst.
She might of banged him one the same as usual, and got her own eye
blacked also, the same as usual; but jest then I lets out another big yowl,
and she give me some milk.
I guess the only reason they ever kep' me at first was so they could
quarrel about my name. They'd lived together a good many years and
quarrelled about everything else under the sun, and was running out of
subjects. A new subject kind o' briskened things up fur a while.
But finally they went too far with it one time. I was about two years old
then and he was still calling me Company and her calling me Dunne.
This time he hits her a lick that lays her out and likes to kill her, and it
gets him scared. But she gets around agin after a while, and they both
see it has went too fur that time, and so they makes up.

"Elmira, I give in," says Hank. "His name is Dunne."
"No," says she, tender-like, "you was right, Hank. His name is
Company." So they pretty near got into another row over that. But they
finally made it up between em I didn't have no last name, and they'd
jest call me Danny. Which they both done faithful ever after, as agreed.
Old Hank, he was a blacksmith, and he used to lamm me considerable,
him and his wife not having any kids of their own to lick. He lammed
me when he was drunk, and he whaled me when he was sober. I never
helt it up agin him much, neither, not fur a good many years, because
he got me used to it young, and I hadn't never knowed nothing else.
Hank's wife, Elmira, she used to lick him jest about as often as he
licked her, and boss him jest as much. So he fell back on me. A man
has jest naturally got to have something to cuss around and boss, so's to
keep himself from finding out he don't amount to nothing. Leastways,
most men is like that. And Hank, he didn't amount to much; and he
kind o' knowed it, way down deep in his inmost gizzards, and it were a
comfort to him to have me around.
But they was one thing he never sot no store by, and I got along now to
where I hold that up agin him more'n all the lickings he ever done. That
was book learning. He never had none himself, and he was sot agin it,
and he never made me get none, and if I'd ever asted him for any he'd
of whaled me fur that. Hank's wife, Elmira, had married beneath her,
and everybody in our town had come to see it, and used to sympathize
with her about it when Hank wasn't around. She'd tell em, yes, it was so.
Back in Elmira, New York, from which her father and mother come to
our part of Illinoise in the early days, her father had kep' a hotel, and
they was stylish kind o' folks. When she was born her mother was
homesick fur all that style and fur York State ways, and so she named
her Elmira.
But when she married Hank, he had considerable land. His father had
left it to him, but it was all swamp land, and so Hank's father, he hunted
more'n he farmed, and Hank and his brothers done the same when he
was a boy. But Hank, he learnt a little blacksmithing when he was
growing up, cause he liked to tinker around and to show how stout he

was. Then, when he married Elmira Appleton, he had to go to work
practising that perfession reg'lar, because he never learnt nothing about
farming. He'd sell fifteen or twenty acres, every now and then, and
they'd be high times till he'd spent it up, and mebby Elmira would get
some new clothes.
But when I was found on the door step, the land was all gone, and
Hank was practising reg'lar, when not busy cussing out the fellers that
had bought the land. Fur some smart fellers had come along, and
bought up all that swamp land and dreened it, and now it was worth
seventy or eighty dollars an acre. Hank, he figgered some one had
cheated him. Which the Walterses could of dreened theirn too, only
they'd ruther hunt ducks and have fish frys than to dig ditches. All of
which I hearn Elmira talking over with the neighbours more'n once
when I was growing up, and they