He got it straight's a string,
didn't ye, Obadiah?"
"Yes," said Obadiah, "it's all jess so. Thar ain't no mistake."
No incident of the insurrection had taken such hold on the popular
imagination as the appeal of Desire Edwards to Perez for protection.
It was immensely flattering to the vanity of the mob, as typifying the
state of terror to which the aristocrats had been reduced, and all the
louts in town felt an inch the taller, by reason of it, and walked
with an additional swagger. The demand for the details of the scene
between Perez and Desire was insatiable and Obadiah was called on
twenty times a day to relate to gaping, grinning audiences just how
she looked, what she did, and said, and what Perez said. The fact that
Obadiah's positive information on the subject was limited to a few
words that Prudence had dropped, made it necessary for him to depend
largely on his imagination to satisfy the demands of his auditors,
which accounts for the slight discrepancy between the actual facts as
known to the reader and the popular version. After everybody had haw
hawed and cracked his joke over Obadiah's last repetition of the
anecdote, Peleg observed:
"I dunno's az a feller kin blame Perez fer givin intew her.
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