We drove away, however, without incident of any sort—sagaciously turning off the main street before we reached the post-office block, where the congregated crowd seemed larger than ever. There seemed to be some fresh tidings, for several scattering outbursts of cheering reached our ears after we could no longer see the throng; but, so far from stopping to inquire what it was, Hurley put whip to the horses, and we rattled smartly along out of the excited village into the tranquil, scythe-shorn country.
The cooper to whom we now went for our butter-firkins was a long-nosed, lean, and taciturn man, whom I think of always as with his apron tucked up at the corner, and his spectacles on his forehead, close under the edge of his square brown-paper cap. He had had word that we were coming, and the firkins were ready for us. He helped us load them in dead silence, and with a gloomy air.
Hurley desired the sound of his own voice. “Well, then, sir,” he said, as our task neared completion, “'tis worth coming out of our way these fifteen miles to lay eyes on such fine, grand firkins as these same—such an elegant shape on 'em, an' put together wid such nateness!”
“You could git 'em just as good at Hagadorn's,” said the cooper, curtly, “within a mile of your place.”
“Huh!” cried Hurley, with contempt, “Haggydorn is it? Faith, we'll not touch him or his firkins ayether! Why, man, they're not fit to mention the same day wid yours. Ah, just look at the darlins, will ye, that nate an' clane a Christian could ate from 'em!”
The cooper was blarney-proof. “Hagadorn's are every smitch as good!” he repeated, ungraciously.
The Irishman looked at him perplexedly, then shook his head as if the problem were too much for him, and slowly clambered up to the seat. He had gathered up the lines, and we were ready to start, before any suitable words came to his tongue.
“Well, then, sir,” he said, “anything to be agreeable. If I hear a man speaking a good word for your firkins, I'll dispute him.”
“The firkins are well enough,” growled the cooper at us, “an' they're made to sell, but I ain't so almighty tickled about takin' Copperhead money for 'em that I want to clap my wings an' crow over it.”
He turned scornfully on his heel at this, and we drove away. The new revelation of our friendlessness depressed me, but Hurley did not seem to mind it at all. After a philosophic comparative remark about the manners of pigs run wild in a bog, he dismissed the affair from his thoughts altogether, and hummed cheerful words to melancholy tunes half the way home, what time he was not talking to the horses or tossing stray conversational fragments at me.