'Not a bit,' replied Robert; 'I expected something of the kind. I didn't imagine I'd please anybody but my own conscience.'
'"Conscience!"' reiterated Nim, with a sneer. 'That stock hain't a long life in the bush, I guess. A storekeeper hain't no business on it, nohow—'twould starve him out; so Uncle Zack don't keep it.' And his unpleasant little eyes twinkled again at the idea of such unwonted connection as his father and a conscience.
'That Indjin war hoppin' mad, I can tell you; for they be the greatest brutes at gettin' drunk in the univarsal world. They'll do 'most anythin' for whisky.'
'The greater the cruelty of giving it to them,' said Robert.
'What are you doin'?' asked Nimrod, after a moment's survey of the other's work.
'Shingling,' was the reply. 'Learning to make shingles.'
'An' you call them shingles?' kicking aside, with a gesture of contempt, the uneven slices of pinewood which had fallen from Robert's tool. 'You hain't dressed the sapwood off them blocks, and the grain eats into one another besides. True for Uncle Zack that gentry from the old country warn't never born to be handlin' axes an' frows. It don't come kinder nateral. They shouldn't be no thicker than four to an inch to be rael handsome shingles,' added he, 'such as sell for seven-an'-sixpence a thousand.'
Nimrod's pertinacious supervision could not be got rid of until dinner; not even though Mr. Wynn asked him his errand in no conciliatory tone.
'Thought I'd kinder like to see how ye were gettin' on,' was the answer. 'New settlers is so precious awk'ard. Thought I'd loaf about awhile, an' see. It's sorter amusin'.'
He was so ignorantly unconscious of doing anything offensive by such gratification of his curiosity, that Robert hardly knew whether to laugh or be angry. Nimrod's thick-skinned sensibilities would have cared little for either. He lounged about, whittling sticks, chewing tobacco, and asking questions, until Andy's stentorian call resounded through the woods near.