She claims I said Tenny was the most beautiful gal on earth. Did I say that? Hell, you being so deaf yourself, you wouldn’t know if I did or not, would you? I didn’t hear myself say it. I didn’t even say Tenny was the prettiest girl in Newton County, which she wasn’t. Mary says she wants to remind me that you’ve already pointed out in more than one of your books that Latha Bourne was the most beautiful girl in the world. Didn’t I tell you Mary knows your books? Well, so do I. In fact, there was a time before Colvin Swain was telling this story to me that he told much of it to Latha herself, a-sitting there on her porch with her the way they did so often, with nothing better to pass the time of day but talk about how the past was passed but had been so nice, and so mean, to both of them. So Latha knew almost all of the story about Tenny, and she would never forget the one afternoon that her dear friend Colvin got up his nerve and told her that he wanted her to know that Tenny may have been the prettiest little thing he’d ever laid eyes on, but she wasn’t anywhere near as lovely as Latha.To tell you the truth, Tenny wasn’t even the second most beautiful female in Newton County, after Latha.
