“What do I care about all this?” broke in Abner. His voice was heavy, with a growling ground-note, and his eyes threw out an angry light under the shading hat-brim. “He can go to the devil, an' take his sword with him, for all o' me!”
Hostile as was his tone, the farmer did not again turn on his heel. Instead, he seemed to suspect that Ni had something more important to say, and looked him steadfastly in the face.
“That's what I say, too,” replied Ni, lightly. “What's beat me is how such a fellow as that got to be an officer right from the word ‘go!’—an' him the poorest shote in the whole lot. Now if it had a' ben Spencer Phillips I could understand it—or Bi Truax, or—or your Jeff—”
The farmer raised his fork menacingly, with a wrathful gesture. “Shet up!” he shouted; “shet up, I say! or I'll make ye!”
To my great amazement Ni was not at all affected by this demonstration. He leaned smilingly against the barrel, and picked out another apple—a spitzenberg this time.
“Now look a-here, Abner,” he said, argumentatively, “what's the good o' gittin' mad? When I've had my say out, why, if you don't like it you needn't, an' nobody's a cent the wuss off. Of course, if you come down to hard-pan, it ain't none o' my business—”
“No,” interjected Abner, in grim assent, “it ain't none o' your business!”
“But there is such a thing as being neighborly,” Ni went on, undismayed, “an' meanin' things kindly, an' takin' 'em as they're meant.”
“Yes, I know them kindly neighbors o' mine!” broke in the farmer with acrid irony, “I've summered 'em an' I've wintered 'em, an' the Lord deliver me from the whole caboodle of 'em! A meaner lot o' cusses never cumbered this foot-stool!”
“It takes all sorts o' people to make up a world,” commented this freckled and sandy-headed young philosopher, testing the crimson skin of his apple with a tentative thumb-nail. “Now you ain't got anything in particular agin me, have you?”