Brady wanted to taste some of Mrs. Goodwin's "ry-al hoe-cake." That was the reason he assigned for his visit on the evening after the meeting. He was always hungry for hoe-cake when anything had happened about which he wanted to talk. But on this evening Job Goodwin, got the lead in conversation at first.
"Mr. Brady," said he, "what's going to happen to us all? These Methodis' sets people crazy with the jerks, I've hearn tell. Hey? I hear dreadful things about 'em. Oh dear, it seems like as if everything come upon folks at once. Hey? The fever's spreadin' at Chilicothe, they tell me. And then, if we should git into a war with England, you know, and the Indians should come and skelp us, they'd be precious few left, betwixt them that went crazy and them that got skelped. Precious few, I tell you. Hey?"
Here Mr. Goodwin knocked the ashes out of his pipe and laid it away, and punched the fire meditatively, endeavoring to discover in his imagination some new and darker pigment for his picture of the future. But failing to think of anything more lugubrious than Methodists, Indians, and fever, he set the tongs in the corner, heaved a sigh of discouragement, and looked at Brady inquiringly.
JOB GOODWIN.
"Ye're loike the hootin' owl, Misther Goodwin; it's the black side ye're afther lookin' at all the toime. Where's Moirton? He aint been to school yet since this quarter took up."
"Morton? He's got to stay out, I expect. My rheumatiz is mighty bad, and I'm powerful weak. I don't think craps'll be good next year, and I expect we'll have a hard row to hoe, partic'lar if we all have the fever, and the Methodis' keep up their excitement and driving people crazy with jerks, and war breaks out with England, and the Indians come on us. But here's Mort now."
"Ha! Moirton, and ye wasn't at matin' last noight? Ye heerd fwat a toime we had. Most iverybody got struck harmless, excipt mesilf and a few other hardened sinners. Ye heerd about Koike? I reckon the Captain's good and glad he's got the blissin'; it's a warrantee on the Captain's skull, maybe. Fwat would ye do for a crony now, Moirton, if Koike come to be a praycher?"
"He aint such a fool, I guess," said Morton, with whom Kike's "getting religion" was an unpleasant topic. "It'll all wear off with Kike soon enough."