“No, ma’am; you won’t,” quoth Peg placidly. “‘Whar the’s be’n no promise thar c’n be no breach.’ I wrote that down ’bout the year fifty-nine. I wa’n’t ’s old’s I be now; but I’ve kep’ it in mind pretty constant. You fix it so ’t I’ll sell them onions at a fair profit ’n’ I’ll give ye a hunderd dollars. ’N’ you c’n tell your lady friends that ol’ Peg Morrison’s sech a scalawag ’at you couldn’t hear t’ marryin’ him, not ef he was the las’ man on earth. An’ that’s the truth. You couldn’t hear t’ it, an’ you c’n bet I wouldn’t.”
“I shall leave this house to-day.—To-day, Peleg Morrison; do you hear?”
Peg glanced up from his anxious scrutiny of the pages of accumulated lore with a look of deep thankfulness.
“Sho! you don’t say so?” he exclaimed. “Wall, take this ’long with you t’ med’tate over: ‘A blue-bottle fly makes a turrible sight of loud buzzin’, but take notice ’at it don’t git anywhar.’ An’ this: ‘Run your head into a stone wall, ef you feel like doin’ it; but don’t blame the wall none fer what happens.”
Jimmy running blithely toward the barn with his book of Vallable Inf’mation in one hand and his cherished bottle of red ink in the other, met the irate Miss Cottle on the way.
“I’m a-going to do once what I’ve been simply achin’ to do ever since I set foot onto this place!” she cried shrilly; and seizing the child by the shoulder she gave him a violent shaking, concluding with a hard-handed slap or two over the ear.
“Take that, you little tyke, you! If I’d ’a’ had you in hand for five years steady, with her gone, I’d ’a’ taken some of the laugh and smartness out of you! But now I wash my hands of you and her and him!”
The child, too astonished to cry out, writhed out of the spinster’s bony grip.
“I ’spise you,” he sputtered, “you ol’—ol’—Cottle woman! ’n’—’n’—I’ll put it in my Vallable Inf’mation book ’at you—slapped me when I was good!”