Bard pounded the table.
“Here, sit down, Maun,” he commanded and then turned with a faint smile toward his elder son. “Bill, eat your victuals and be quiet. O’ course,” he added presently, “there ain’t no doubt but what Dave is a damned fool, and he’s goin’ to wake up one o’ these days and find it out, too. But now he’s gone away I don’t see what the old man’s goin’ to do. I advised him to sell out the farm and go up to Beulah an’ take it easy. There ain’t no good o’ William Henry stayin’ down here no longer. He’ll have to get a hired man now, and with wages where they is he wouldn’t clean up nothin’.”
After a short silence, William chuckled softly as he raised his saucer of hot, clear tea to his lips.
“I was just thinkin’ about the Orange Walk down to Lockwood last year,” he explained. “There was Dave, with a few drinks in him, struttin’ around the park, darin’ everybody to a scrap. Gosh, it’s funny to think o’ him bein’ a preacher. I mind that night—we didn’t get home till seven o’clock the next mornin’ an’ I pitched in the harvest field all that day.”
“Sure,” nodded Bard. “I’ve done the same thing many a time when I was your age.”
“And the next night,” continued William proudly, “me and Dave was up to Ras Livermore’s harvest dance. That hoe-down lasted till five in the mornin’. I can see Dave yet, sweatin’ through the whole thing—never missed a dance.”
“Wonder if Ras is goin’ to put on a shin-dig this here harvest?” mused Bard.
“He ain’t never missed puttin’ one on since I can remember,” said the hired girl, who had been listening intently.
“The other day,” William remarked, “I saw Ras up in Abe Lavanagh’s barber shop. I ast him if he was goin’ to have a dance this year an’ he hit me an awful clout on the back an’ he says: ‘Better’n’ bigger’n ever, my boy. Come an’ bring yer fleusie. They’ll be plenty to eat, and Alec Dent is goin’ to fiddle again.’”