Figger Bush arose slinkingly and walked behind Popsy at a respectful distance, like a dog which had been whipped and told not to follow. He kept close to the high weeds and the bushes which grew beside the road, so that he could hide promptly if Popsy turned and looked back.
But Popsy did not look back. His age-dimmed eyes were set upon a big white house with large colonial columns which stood upon the top of the hill. Half a century had passed since he had seen this home last, and eagerness overcame his physical weakness and carried him to the hilltop where the beautiful lawn lay like a green carpet spread before the door.
Popsy leaned weakly upon the gate and gazed long and earnestly at the stately old home. He assumed the attitude of one who was listening for some familiar sound, and was perplexed because he could hear nothing.
Alas! Popsy was listening for footsteps that were silent and for voices which for fifty years had not been music in the porches of the ear! For a moment the old man had forgotten the years which had passed since last he saw this house, and he was listening for the voices of a young bride’s father and mother, and for the laughter and shouting of three Gaitskill boys—Tom, Jim, Henry!
“I bound dem boys is huntin’ squorls over in de swamp, or mebbe dey’s monkeyin’ aroun’ dat wash-hole,” the old man murmured doubtfully. “Dat house shore do ’pear powerful still ’thout dem noisy, aggervatin’ bullies bellerin’ to each yuther.”
Popsy fumbled feebly through his pockets and brought his hands out empty.
“Dem dum boys is mighty stingy wid deir chawin’ terbacker,” he mumbled in an irritated tone. “Dey don’t gimme half enough to keep me runnin’! Sence Tom hitched up wid dat pretty Mis’ Mildred, he done lef’ off chawin’, an dat cuts down my ’lowance. Nev’ mind! I knows whar dem dum boys keep deir chawin’, an’ I’ll ’vent some excuse to go to de house an’ I’ll holp myse’f liberal.”
Suddenly Popsy Spout remembered certain boyish pranks which Tom and Jim and Henry had played upon him fifty years before. He dimly recalled finding his tables and chairs hanging from the limbs of trees, his bed carried over in the cow-pasture and placed in the middle of the field, his few cooking pots crowning the tops of fence-posts around his cabin!
“Hod zickety!” he exclaimed. “I bound dem rapscallions is pesticatin’ my Ca’lline plum’ to death!”
He turned away from the gate and hurried as rapidly as his feeble legs would carry him down the road.