"What!" snapped old Billy. "A grandson! I got a grandson, an' no person told me afore? Not even that there sneak Sam, cuss him! He always was too consarned mean to live. A grandson? I'm a-goin' over termorrer, sure's I'm alive."
"No use for you to go, Billy," said Mrs. Norris, with marvellous diplomacy for such a simple, unworldly farmer's wife to suddenly acquire. "Sammy wouldn't let you set foot on his place. He wouldn't let you put an eye or a finger on that precious baby—not for the whole earth."
"What! Not me, the little chap's grandfather?" blurted old Billy in a rage. "I'm a-goin' to see that baby, that's all there is to it. I tell yer, I'm a-goin'."
"No use, father; you'll only make things worse," sighed Sam's mother, plaintively; but in her heart laughter gurgled like a spring. To the gift of diplomacy Mrs. Norris was fast adding the art of being an actress. "If you go there Sam'll set the dog on you. I know he will, from the way he was talking," she concluded.
"Oh! got a dog, have they? Well, I bet they've got no cow," sneered Billy. Then after a meaning pause: "I say Marthy, have they got a cow?"
"No," replied Mrs. Norris, shortly.
"No cow, an' a sick woman and a baby—my grandchild—in the house? Now ain't that jes' like that sneak Sam? They'll jes' kill that baby atween them, they're that igner'nt. Hev they got enny milk fer them two babbling kids, Della an' the baby—my grandchild?"
"No!" snapped Mrs. Norris, while through her mind echoed some terrifying lines she had heard as a child:
"All liars dwell with him in hell,
And many more who cursed and swore."
"An' there's that young Shorthorn of ours, Marthy. Couldn't we spare her?" he asked with a pathetic eagerness. "We've got eight other cows to milk. Can't we spare her? If you think Sam'll set the dog on me, I'll have her driv over in the mornin'. Jim'll take her."