“I'm surprised, Obadiah, to hear you talk the way you do. I ain't forgot that meetin' in the Town Hall where you got up and owned up that he was 'bout right, and thet you'd been mean as dirt, but he shook hands with you, and forgave you like a gentleman as he was, and I thought you were good friends.”
“I'm good friends with anybody that keeps out of my way,” said Strout. “But that Sawyer was like that malary that the boys got off to war. It gets into your blood and you can't get it out. Why, he snubbed 'Zeke Pettingill jest the same as he did me when they had that sleigh ride, and he didn't have spunk enough to hit back. If 'Zeke had jined in with me we'd had him out o' town lively. And then the way he butted in at my concert and turned a high-class musical entertainment inter a nigger minstrel show by whistling a tune vas enough to make anybody mad clean through.”
“Wall, you got mad, didn't you?” said Hiram. “What good did it do yer?”
Mr. Strout's newly aroused wrath was not appeased.
“Then again, the way he squeezed himself in at that surprise party. Since I married Bessie Chisholm, I've talked to her a good many times 'bout the way she danced with him that night.”
“Come now, Strout, what did she say? She wasn't engaged to you then. What did she say? Now be honest.”
Mr. Strout could not restrain a grim smile.
“Wall, to tell the truth, Hiram, she told me it was none of my business, an' when I came to think it over I didn't believe it was—but it would be now.”
Mr. Strout's vials of wrath had not all been emptied. He seemed to be enjoying a rehearsal of all his past troubles and grievances.
“I guess that if the folks had known at first that the Jim Sawyer who died in the Poor House was his uncle, they wouldn't have considered him such great shucks after all. An' the way he tried to get Huldy Mason to marry him and throw over 'Zeke Pettingill, who had loved her ever since she was a baby, was a mighty mean piece of business in my opinion.”