The hen-partridge, unruffled and tense, stretched her neck straighter, but gave no sign of departing. Farther on, a noisy squirrel filled the woods with his running-down-clock-works diminuendo as the intruder passed him. A rabbit hopped leisurely along the shady path, stopping at intervals to sit up. His left oblique into the bushes, as David came nearer, was a flashing epitome of startled agility, and as the dab of cotton on the rear end of the epitome disappeared, David laughed.
“Feelin’ purty good this mornin’, Dave?”
David stopped and gazed about him.
“Here I be,” called Avery, striding toward him David was amused to see that the old man had been picking wild-flowers.
“Looks kind of queer to ye, don’t it—me a-pickin’ posies, though it do be a Sunday mornin’.” Hoss rubbed his hand down his forehead, along his nose, and so on, to the end of his beard, which he wound round one finger and released slowly. It seemed as though he had drawn off the harlequin mask worn on work-days. Despite the all-but-sealed and watery orifice where his “off eye,” as he called it, used to be, and the blink and twinkle of his good eye, the old man looked dignified, almost majestical. Perhaps the fact that he was not chewing tobacco lent him a certain impressive unreality. He usually plunged into a narrative like a bull going through a snake-fence, head down and tail whisking. Now he seemed to be mentally letting down the bars, one by one, that he might carry himself with dignity into unfrequented fields of reminiscence.
“Mebby you have often been wonderin’ how I come to have the name of ‘Hoss.’ Like as not you have thought of it. A city feller ast me thet once, but he didn’t find out; howcome I did tell him it mought pussibly be fur the same reason he oughter be called a Jassax. He didn’t ast me no distickly pussonel questions a’ter thet.
“Mebby likewise you’re wonderin’ how I come to lose this here blinker. Another feller ast me thet onct. I didn’t do nothin’ to him. I jest said, says I, ‘I overworked it tryin’ to see too fur into other folkses business.’ And he quit astin’ me pussonel questions, likewise. Now, you ain’t never ast me nothin’ like thet; howcome I reckon you be goin’ to ast me suthin’, from the way you be lookin’ at me. And you kin, and I’ll tell you.”
“I did want to see you,” replied David. “Of course, you know Swickey and I are going to be married, but I thought I’d come and ask you for her just the same.”
“Wal, thet’s what I call mighty ginerous of you; howcome I don’t see as you be worryin’ what the answer’ll be.”
“We intend to go for a trip,” continued David. “I want my Aunt Elizabeth to know Swickey,—I know they will like each other,—and I want Swickey to see something of the country before we settle down here to stay. We want you to come with us.”