“He didn't amount to much when Mr. Sawyer tackled him,” and with a scornful laugh Mrs. Maxwell flounced out of the store.
“Your wife's as bad as the rest on 'em, Hiram.”
“Yes, Obadiah; it seems to be whoopedemic, as the doctors say.”
Quincy's second and third years at Andover passed quickly and again vacation time had come.
“Let's go to Fernborough as usual,” said Quincy, and Tom, without argument, seconded the motion. This time, Tom was Quincy's guest. They were young men now. Quincy was seventeen and Tom nineteen, but the fields were as green, the fruit as sweet, the vegetables as crisp and fresh, and their friends as glad to see them as when they were children.
A year had brought some changes. Mrs. Maxwell mourned the loss of her son Obadiah, who had been gored by an angry bull and found dead in the West pasture. For a wonder, Mr. Strout showed some sympathy, perhaps because the little boy was his namesake.
The Rev. Caleb Howe had passed away. In his place the church had called the Rev. Hudson Quarles, a bachelor of forty, whose hobby was fancy fowls. He joined the Grange and talked on “Poultry Raising” and “A Small Fortune in Squabs.” His hens were the heaviest for their age in the community, and to prove it he was always willing to “weigh up” at the grocery store.
Mr. Strout called him a crank and played a joke on him that led to a division in the church and came near costing Mr. Strout his position as organist.
There were two scales on the long grocery counter. Mr. Strout tampered with one of them by affixing two pounds of lead to it which he covered with gold paint to hide the deception.
Bob Wood's hen was weighed in the fraudulent scales and beat Mr. Quarles' by a half pound, the clergyman's being really a pound and a half the heavier. The plot would have been a success but for the keen-eyed Quincy who examined the scales and discovered the imposition.