Miss Martha and Sister Tombs smiled softly at the startling figure. Miss Mary and the unmarried pastor dropped their eyes. But when Doctor Grace said, fervently, "That sounds good!" all admitted the excellence of Parson Tombs's suggestion.
XXXVIII.
RUBBING AGAINST MEN
About three in the afternoon on the last day of the year John March was in the saddle loping down from Widewood.
He was thinking of one of the most serious obstacles to the furtherance of his enterprise: the stubborn hostility of the Sandstone County mountaineers. To the gentlest of them it meant changes that would make game scarcer and circumscribe and belittle their consciously small and circumscribed lives; to the wilder sort it meant an invasion of aliens who had never come before for other purpose than to break up their stills and drag them to jail. As he came out into the Susie and Pussie pike he met a frowsy pinewoodsman astride a mule, returning into the hills.
"Howdy, Enos." They halted.
"Howdy, Johnnie. Well, ef you ain't been a-swappin' critters ag'n, to be sho'! Looks mighty much like you a-chawed this time, less'n this critter an' the one you had both deceives they looks a pow'ful sight."
John expressed himself unalarmed and asked the news.
"I ain't pick up much news in the Susie," said Enos. "Jeff-Jack's house beginnin' to look mos' done. Scan'lous fine house! Mawnstus hayndy, havin' it jined'n' right on, sawt o', to old Halliday's that a way. Johnnie, why don't you marry? You kin do it; the gal fools ain't all peg out yit."