“You forget yourself,” sharply retorted Dan.
“Well, well,” pursued Jack, good-naturedly, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe and slowly refilled it. “If you hadn't have told me, I wouldn't have believed you—well, well.” He put his pipe into his mouth and hung on it for a moment; then he took it out and spoke thoughtfully. “I reckon I've known you from a child, haven't I, Mr. Dan?” he asked.
“That's so, Jack,” responded the young man, “and if you can recommend me, I want you to help me to a job for a week or two—then I'm off to town.”
“I've known you from a child year in an' year out,” went on Jack, blandly disregarding the interruption. “From the time you was sech a pleasant-spoken little boy that it did me good to bow to you when you rode by with the Major. 'Thar's not another like him in the country,' I said to Bill Bates, an' he said to me, 'Thar's not a man between here an' Leicesterburg as ain't ready to say the same.' Then time went on an' you got bigger, an' the year came when the crops failed an' Sairy got sick, an' I took a mortgage on this here house—an' what should happen but that you stepped right up an' paid it out of yo' own pocket. And you kept it from the Major. Lord, Lord, to think the Major never knew which way the money went.”
“We won't speak of that,” said Dan, throwing back his head. The thought that the innkeeper might be going to offer him the money stung him into anger.
But Jack knew his man, and he would as soon have thought of throwing a handful of dust into his face. “Jest as you like, suh, jest as you like,” he returned easily, and went on smoking.
Dan sat down in a chair upon the porch, and taking out his knife began idly whittling at the end of a stick. A small boy, in blue jean breeches, watched him eagerly from the steps, and he spoke to him pleasantly while he cut into the wood.
“Did you ever see a horse's head on a cane, sonny?”
The child sucked his dirty thumb and edged nearer.
“Naw, suh, but I've seen a dawg's,” he answered, drawing out his thumb like a stopper and sticking it in again.