"Did she now?" quoth Michael. "So she has rayfused me again—though it wasn't just like a proposal this time. Still—we'll count it so's to make sure."
He gravely walked to a smooth plank in the partition behind the door, and picked up the stub of a pencil from a ledge. On this board was a long array of pencil marks—four straight, up and down marks, and a fifth "slantingdicular" across them. There were a great many of these marks.
Each of these straight, up and down, marks meant "No," and the slanting mark meant another "No"; so that Meena's refusals of the coachman's proposal for her hand were grouped in fives.
"The Good Book says Jacob sarved siven years for Rachael, and then another siven. He didn't have nawthin' on me—sorra a bit! When Meena's said 'No' a thousan' times, she'll forgit some day an' say 'Yis.'"
He went back to shaking the pan on the stove, in which the cubes of salt pork were sputtering. He mixed some flour and cornmeal in a plate, with salt and pepper. Wiping each of the little fish partly dry, he rolled them in the mixture, and then laid them methodically in rows upon a board. When the fat in the skillet was piping hot, he dropped in the fish easily so as not to splash the hot fat about. Then with a fork he turned them as they browned.
As he forked them out of the hot fat, all brown and crispy, he laid them on a sheet of brown paper for a bit to drain off the fat. Then the boys' plates and his own were filled with the well fried fish.
"There's just a mess for us," said Michael, as they sat down. "For what we are about to rayceive make us tr-r-ruly grateful! Pass the bread, Master Bobby. 'Tis the appetite lends sauce to the male, so they say. Eat hearty!"
Bobby and Fred had plenty of the "sauce" the coachman spoke of. After the excitement and adventures of the afternoon they had much to tell Michael, too, and the supper was a merry one.
Fred had to go home at eight o'clock and an hour and a half later it was Bobby's bedtime. But the house seemed very still and lonely when he had gone to bed, and he lay a long time listening to the crickets and the katydids, and the other night-flying insects outside the screens.
He heard Michael drive out of the lane to go to the station and he was still awake when the carriage returned and his father and mother came into the house. They came quietly up stairs, whispering softly, but the door between Bobby's room and his mother's dressing-room was ajar and he could hear his parents talking in there. They thought him asleep, of course.