“Well, but don’t you see, it would have looked so bad to say, ‘I got that eye a-fighting?’ and it was only a little while ’fore I was married. What would my Sally ha’ said if she know’d I fought our Mike?”
“Why, of course; I remember now, Mike was ill in bed for a week at the same time.”
“That’s so, Mas’ Don,” said Jem, chuckling; “and he was werry ill. You see, he come to the yard to work, after you’d begged him on, and he was drunk as a fiddler—not as ever I see a fiddler that way. And then, i’stead o’ doing his work, he was nasty, and began cussing. He cussed everything, from the barrow and truck right up to your uncle, whose money he took, and then he began cussing o’ you, Mas’ Don; and I told him he ought to be ashamed of hisself for cussing the young gent as got him work; and no sooner had I said that than I found myself sitting in a puddle, with my nose bleeding.”
“Well?” said Don, who was deeply interested.
“Well, Mas’ Don, that’s all.”
“No, it isn’t, Jem; you say you fought Mike.”
“Well, I s’pose I did, Mas’ Don.”
“‘Suppose you did’?”
“Yes; I only recklect feeling wild because my clean shirt and necktie was all in a mess. I don’t recklect any more—only washing my sore knuckles at the pump, and holding a half hun’erd weight up again my eye.”
“But Mike stopped away from work for a week.”