“Well, well!” he exclaimed, “if you have any thing of importance to say, I wish to hear it at once.”
“Want to know!” returned the stranger, elevating his eyebrows. “Now that’s what I call right down mean, bluffin’ a chap off in that ’ere style when he’s talkin’ ’bout the land of his birth, and old-time associations. I find I can’t talk enough to please you, but I calkilate you’ll ’scuse me on the score that natur’ neglected to put the gift o’ gab in my blamed noddle.
“Now, in that respect, I ain’t one iotum like the old woman, ’cause why? she can talk the ha’r right off o’ your head in three jerks of a possum’s ear, and ef you’s with her from Sunday mornin’ till Saturday night, you wouldn’t find a chance to crowd in a word edgewise. But I did forgit my business, that’s a fact; thereby givin’ further proof that mother told no lie, when she said as how I was etarnally disrememberin’ every blamed thing of importance. But now tew the p’int, as Tabitha allus said, when tellin’ one o’ her long-winded yarns. Tabitha had been childerns’ nuss at some time of her life, and so had acquired a habit o’ story-tellin’ that clung to her through the hull course of her existence—”
“Curse you for an idiot!” growled McCabe, irascibly, and with an oath he started away.
“Hold on, mister,” said Jonathan Boggs, coolly laying his hand on the other’s shoulder. “Don’t go off ’thout hearin’ me through.”
“Hands off, scoundrel!” commanded the settler, fiercely. “I’ll knock you down if you repeat this insult.”
“I wouldn’t dew that, mister, I swow I wouldn’t. It takes such a hard lick to knock me down that ye might cripple your hand for life. Besides, when I was a boy it wa’n’t considered healthy tew undertake sech a rash job, and even now you might not be dewin’ the right thing toward yourself.”
Jim McCabe was a coward, like all other bullies. So these words, and the manner in which they were uttered, alarmed him not a little.
“Who the deuce are you, anyway?” he demanded, sullenly.