The little boy afterward saw his perfect father hand these very tracts to Milo Barrus, when they met him on the street, saying, "Here, Barrus, get your soul saved while you wait!" Then they laughed together.
The little boy wondered if this meant that Milo Barrus had come to the Feet, or been born again, or something. Or if it meant that his father also spelled God with a little g. He did not think of it, however, until it was too late to ask.
The flawless father went away at the end of the week, "over the County Fair circuit, selling Chief White Cloud's Great Indian Remedy," the little boy heard him tell Clytie. Also he heard his grandfather say to Clytie, "Thank God, not for another year!"
The little boy liked Nancy better than ever after that, because she had liked his father so much, saying he was exactly like a prince, giving pennies and nickels to everybody and being so handsome and big and grand. She wished her own Uncle Doctor could be as beautiful and great; and the little boy was generous enough to wish that his own plain grandfather might be almost as fine.
CHAPTER VII
The Superlative Cousin Bill J.
A splendid new interest had now come into the household in the person of one whom Clytemnestra had so often named as Cousin Bill J. Grandfather Delcher having been ordered south for the winter by Dr. Crealock, Cousin Bill J., upon Clytie's recommendation, was imported from up Fredonia way to look after the cow and be a man about the place. Clytie assured Grandfather Delcher that Cousin Bill J. had "never uttered an oath, though he's been around horses all his life!" This made him at once an object of interest to the little boy, though doubtless he failed to appraise the restraint at anything like its true value. It had sufficed Grandfather Delcher, however, and Cousin Bill J., securing leave of absence from the livery-stable in Fredonia, arrived the day the old man left, making a double excitement for the household.
He proved to be a fascinating person; handsome, affable, a ready talker upon all matters of interest— though sarcastic, withal—and fond of boys. True, he had not long hair like the little boy's father. Indeed, he had not much hair at all, except a sort of curtain of black curls extending from ear to ear at the back of his bare, pink head. But the little boy had to admit that Cousin Bill J.'s moustache was even grander than his father's. It fell in two graceful festoons far below his chin, with a little eyelet curled into each tip, and, like the ringlets, it showed the blue-black lustre of the crow's wing. In the full sunlight, at times, it became almost a royal purple.
Later observation taught the little boy that this splendid hue was applied at intervals by Cousin Bill J. himself. He did it daintily with a small brush, every time the moustache began to show a bit rusty at the roots; Bernal never failed to be present at this ceremony; nor to resolve that his own moustache, when it came, should be as scrupulously cared for—not left, like Dr. Crealock's, for example, to become speckled and gray.