A week later Jim Halloween stopped with a bit of news at Bottom's Ordinary, where old Adam Doolittle dozed under the mulberry tree in a rush chair which had been brought over in his son's oxcart.
"Have you all heard that our Mr. Mullen has accepted a call to larger fields?" he inquired, "an' that Judy Revercomb has gone clean daft because he's going to leave us?"
"She didn't have far to go," observed Mrs. Bottom.
"Well, you'd never have known it to look at her," commented young Adam, "but 'tis a true sayin' that you can't tell the quality of the meat by the colour of the feathers."
"You'd better be speakin' particular, suh, an' not general," retorted old Adam, who was in a querulous mood as the result of too abrupt an awakening from his nap. "What you ain't known it doesn't follow other folks ain't, does it? Human natur is generally made with a streak of foolishness an' a streak of sense, just as fat an' lean runs in a piece of bacon. That's what I say, an' I reckon I ought to know, bein' turned ninety."
"All the same thar's some folks that ain't streaked at all, but a solid lump of silliness like Judy Hatch," returned his son.
This was too much for the patience of the patriarchial spirit, and old
Adam began to shake as though he were suddenly smitten with palsy.
"What do you mean by contradictin' me, suh? Didn't I bring you into the world?" he demanded.
A reproachful shake of the head passed round the group.
"You oughtn't to contradict him, young Adam. Ain't he yo' pa?" said Mrs.
Bottom, rebukingly.