"I reckon they told ye ye wouldn't be welcome down on the Old Ivison Place. Didn't some of 'em say, now, that a gang called the Poison Oakers might try to drive ye out?—if I'm not too bold in askin'."
"Yes," said the voice of Oliver Drew.
"Uh-huh! I thought as much. Well, Mr. Drew, ye got to make allowances for ol'-timers in the hills. We get set in our ways, as the fella says; and I reckon we don't like outsiders to come in any too well.
"But anybody with any savvy oughta know its different in a case like yours. Why, what little feed we'd get offen your little piece, if you wasn't there, wouldn't amount to the price of a saddle string. It was plumb loco for any one to tell ye we'd raise a rumpus 'bout ye bein' down there."
"I thought about the same," observed Oliver Drew quietly.
There came a distinct pause in the dialogue. Once more Jessamy straightened her arms and pushed head and shoulders above the ferns. The person who had disturbed the frogs was nowhere to be seen. He too, perhaps, had taken up a lizardlike progress through the ferns, and was now listening to all that was being said by Oliver and Selden.
She flattened herself again, and held one hand behind her ear to catch every word.
"Yes, sir, plumb loco," Old Man Selden reiterated. "And they ain't no reason on earth why you and us can't be the best o' friends. That's what we oughta be, seein' we're pretty near neighbours."
"I'm sure I'm perfectly willing to be friendly, Mr. Selden."
"Course ye are. Just so! An' so are we. And listen here, Mr. Drew: Don't ye put too much stock in that there Poison Oaker racket."