He greeted them smoothly: "Yes, yes, I'm purrfickly satisfied, purrfickly! Not a word to say—better'n I expected," he added.
Bill was not quite keen enough to perceive the insult which lay in that final clause, and Sarah dared not inform him for fear of trouble.
As Harkey drove away, however, Bill had a dim feeling of dissatisfaction with him.
"He's too gol-dang polite, that feller is; I don't like such butter-mouth chaps—they'd steal the cents off'n a dead nigger's eyes."
III
The second Sunday after the partition of goods the entire Coolly turned out to church in spite of the muddy road. The men, after driving up to the door of the little white church and helping the women to alight, drove out to the sheds along the fence and gathered in knots beside their wagons in the warm spring sun. It was very pleasant there, and the men leaned with relaxed muscles upon the wagon-wheels, or sat on the fence with jack-knives in hand. The horses, weary with six days seeding, slept with closed eyes and drooping lips. Generally the talk was upon spring work, each man bragging of the number of acres he had sown during the week, but this morning the talk was all about the division which had come between the nieces of "deceased Williams." They discussed it slowly as one might eat a choice pudding in order to extract the flavor from each spoonful.
"What is it all about, anyhow?" asked Jim Cranby. "I ain't heard nothing about it." He had stood in open-mouthed perplexity trying to catch a clew. Coming late, he found it baffling.
"That shows where he lives; a man might as well live in a well as up in Molasses Gap," said one of the younger men, pointing up to the Coolly. "Why, Ike Harkey is kicking about the six shotes the Deacon put off on him."
"No, it wasn't the shotes, it was a farrer cow," put in Clint Stone.
"Well, I heard it was a shote."