"Woa, Sal!" he says (all preachers drive mares, it may be interpolated), "have I the pleasure of addressing Brother Ryder?"
"The same, sir."
"My name is Chough, sir; the annual Conference has done me the favor of associating my name with yours at Swan Neck."
"Oh, ho! You are my colleague; my wife, Brother Chough!"
The wife runs Brother Chough over immediately, who looks very red and awkward, and she gives her estimate of him in an undertone. It will be bad for Chough if he is at all airish or scholastic, or individual in his opinions, for between a senior pastor's wife and his young assistant there is an hereditary distrust; conceit has no show at all in a young itinerant.
But Chough wisely confines his remarks to asking questions about the bishops, and agrees with us that Doctor Bim's address on the church extension cause was sound as the Fathers, and finally gives us his own extraction, which we trace to the respectable Choughs of Caroline County, and at once fraternize with him.
Those were happy days for us children! Cornfield and barn and negro quarter rolled by us like things of fable. We watched the squirrels in the scrubwood as never again we shall take interest in human companionship, and stopped at farm-house troughs to water our nag with keener joy than that with which we have since gazed upon far blue seas or soft cis-alpine lakes and rivers.
At last we reach the place; the complement of free negro cabins lies on its outskirts; we ask the way to the Methodist preacher's residence, and learning with feigned surprise that "he has just gone an' lef town for good," cross a sandy creek and bridge, climb a hill, and stop at our future threshold.
It is an ancient edifice of brick; a pigmy stable stands beside it, with a gate intervening, and in the rear we have a lot big enough to graze one frugal horse, and a garden sufficiently large to employ us boys. Our father starts off immediately to find the keys; but in the face of a gathering of small lads in pinafores and jack-knives, who come to gaze at us, we scale the gate, enter a back shutter, and cry a welcome to our mother from the second-story front.