“A young rooster, ’bout fryin’ size,” she said, laughing sneeringly, the scorn accented by her depopulated gums. It seemed very forlorn to be laughed at like that.
“Waal, a man can’t be ’lected jedge till he’s thirty,” said Jessup, consciously imparting information. “He’s been on the bench right smart time, too.”
Mrs. Sayles looked at him over her spectacles, still knitting, as if her industry were a disconnected function.
“What air thirty?”
“Waal”—began Jessup, argumentatively, puffing at his cob pipe. Thirty seemed to him a mature age. And the constitution of the State evidently presumes folly to be permanent if it is not in some sort exorcised before reaching that stage of manhood. He did not continue, however, seeing that thirty was held to be very young by Mrs. Sayles, who, to judge from her wrinkles, might be some four or five hundred.
“I ain’t ’quainted with the man myself,” she went on presently, “an’ what’s more I ain’t wantin’ ter be. But,” impressively, “I know a woman ez knowed that man’s mother whenst he war a baby. She ’lowed he war a powerful cantankerous infant, ailin’ an’ hollerin’ all night an’ mighty nigh all day; couldn’t make up his mind ter die, an’ yit warn’t willin’ ter take the trouble ter live.”
Jessup felt it a certain injustice that the nocturnal rampages of infancy should be as rancorously animadverted upon as the late hours of a larger growth.
“Waal, Jedge Gwinnan is powerful pop’lar now’days,” he urged. “He made a mighty fine race when he war ’lected.”
“Shucks! ye can’t tell me nuthin’!” said his mother, self-sufficiently. “I know all ’bout him, an’ Jedge Burns too, ez war on the bench afore Jeemes Gwinnan. Whenst I war a widder-woman an’ lived in Kildeer County we-uns useter hev Jedge Burns on the circuit. He war a settled, middle-aged man ’bout fifty, an’ the law war upheld, an’ things went easy, an’ he war ’lected time arter time, till one year they all turned crazy ’bout this hyar feller, ez war run by his party through fools bein’ sca’ce, I s’pose. Jeemes war ’lected. I tell ye I know all ’bout him. He war born right yander nigh Colbury, an’ I know a woman ez useter be mighty friendly with his mother.”
“What fambly in Colbury did he marry inter?” asked her daughter-in-law, more interested in items of personal history than in his judicial record.