“You didn’t promise me what I asked,” said Joe, quietly.
“No, and that ain’t all!” returned Isom.
The tall corn swallowed Isom and his horse as the sea swallowed Pharaoh and his host. When he returned to the end of the field where the rebellion had broken out, he found Joe sitting on the beam of his plow and the well-pleased horse asleep in the sun.
Isom said nothing, but plunged away into the tall corn. When he came back next time Joe was unhitching his horse.
“Now, look a-here, Joe,” Isom began, in quite a changed tone, “don’t you fly up and leave an old man in the lurch that way.”
“You know what I said,” Joe told him.
“I’ll give in to you, Joe; I’ll give you everything you ask 51 for, and more,” yielded Isom, seeing that Joe intended to leave. “I’ll put it in writing if you want me to Joe–I’ll do anything to keep you, son. You’re the only man I ever had on this place I wouldn’t rather see goin’ than comin’.”
Isom’s word was satisfactory to Joe, and he returned to work.
That turned out a day to be remembered in the household of Isom Chase. If he had come into the kitchen at noon with all the hoarded savings of his years and thrown them down before her eyes, Ollie could not have been more surprised and mystified than she was when he appeared from the smokehouse carrying a large ham.
After his crafty way in a tight pinch Isom turned necessity into profit by making out that the act was free and voluntary, with the pleasure and comfort of his pretty little wife underlying and prompting it all. He grinned as if he would break his beard when he put the ham down on the table and cut it in two at the middle joint as deftly as a butcher.