“Yep—an’ hist’ry.”
“How much is two an’ a quarter times thirty?”
She figured with a pencil. “Sixty-seven-fifty,” she reported.
“Less two-fifty fer a shirt and a dollar fer tobacco, an’ fifty cents fer this here tie I’m wearin’?”
After a pause: “Sixty-three dollars and fifty cents.”
“That’s what’s right here in me jeans, kiddo. The way I’m hoardin’ it up these days is what’s makin’ hard times. I’m gonta set on the seat, Wing-o.”
As she did not dispute this he clambered to the seat and sat facing her, his legs draped over the low back uncomfortably. He took from his pocket the stub of a pencil and abstractedly wrote on the seat back between his long legs: “And the sons also of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.”
“Don’t begat all over that there seat!” warned the girl. “Can’t you think of anything but ‘The sons also of Aaron?’ You talk it an’ dream it an’ write it everywhere you go. You’re a begatto-maniac, Jack!”
Mr. Daisy wet the rubber eraser and tried to obliterate the words. “Bring your chair over here by me,” he suggested.
“I’m doin’ well enough right here, thank you. Why don’t you get ye a rubber stamp with that Aaron business on it, an’ have it and a pad handy in your pocket?”