“I’m thinkin’,” said Ethan, “that it would be a good day for a trip down the river. The wind’s good this mornin’, and if you boys want to try it, I don’t know as we’ll find a better day.”
“That’s the thing,” said Ben, enthusiastically. “How far down do you go, Ethan?”
“Oh, that’ll depend,” replied the boatman, who was usually as averse to giving a decided expression of his opinion as any lawyer might have been. “We can go as far as we want to, if not farther, and then if we haven’t gone far enough we can go farther, I take it.”
“Precisely,” laughed Bert. “Thank you, Ethan.”
“Ye haven’t anything to thank me for,” replied the boatman, soberly. “I was jest givin’ you my opinion, that’s all.”
“That’s what I was grateful for,” said Bert. “Ethan, do the people down here ever laugh?”
“Laugh? I s’pose so. I don’t jest know what ye mean.”
“Oh, nothing much; but I’ve noticed how sober everybody was. We’ve seen a good many, but I don’t believe I ever heard one of them give a real good hearty laugh. I didn’t know but they’d forgotten how.”
“I guess they don’t spend no time grinnin’, if that’s what ye mean,” replied Ethan, evidently stirred by the apparent reflection upon the people of the region. “I don’t know as they have the regulation snicker some o’ the city folks puts on. I’ve sometimes suspicioned that they put on that grin o’ theirs first thing in the mornin’, along with their clothes. They say, ‘how de do,’ ‘how de do,’ an’ smile an’ smile jest as if they’d got to do it, same’s as they’d take a dose o’ pickery. I don’t see no sense in it, for my part.”