“Little spell ago!” cried Amazeen. “He ain’t been back since he went away that time in the fall when Hime’s el’phunt got loose.”
“Mebbe, but time slides away kind o’ fast,” grudgingly admitted Buck. “Howsomever, they’ll git married all right when he comes back. If Coll Willard says so, then they will, that’s all! Phin Look can’t stop it. His cake was dough when he licked Bradish.”
“As I’ve allus understood the row, King had the right of it,” observed the man behind the stove.
“Why, the Jedge himself told me,” said Buck, “that all King done in the world was to step up to the Squire and call him into line for braggin’ round how he’d cut out King the night before and walked home with Sylvene from the schoolhouse out Dunham’s way. Jedge told me so himself. That’s comin’ pretty straight!”
“Well, now, that don’t seem like Squire Phin Look,” broke in Amazeen, wagging his head decisively. “I’ve heard that version, but it don’t seem like Squire Phin—and we’ve known him a long time, too.”
“He ain’t ever given the lie to the Jedge,” said Buck. “He ain’t ever said aye, yes or no about it. Nat’rally think, then, he must be ashamed of it, wouldn’t ye? I tell ye, boys, when there’s a woman in the case we don’t none of us know what the best of us might do. Squire Phin Look is an almighty nice man, good and kind-hearted and smarter’n a whip. I’ve allus stood up for him, and I was in the scheme——” He checked himself suddenly in some confusion with a side glance at Amazeen. “I was in hopes that the match wouldn’t come off with Bradish. But the Squire went and lost his head and kicked up—-like the best do sometimes when there’s a woman in the case. Sylvene Willard ain’t the woman to stand that kind of bus’ness. You can’t blame her. I say she and Bradish will git married, and you can mark my word on it.”
A man sat on a bit of board that was laid across an unheaded keg of nails. He had been listening, elbows on his knees, his brown hands braiding and unbraiding a length of rope with a sailor’s deftness. This man was Mate Seekins of the A. P. Bristol, home in Palermo for his midwinter lay-off.
“What do they hear here in town from Bradish?” he inquired. There was a suppressed note of meaning in his voice that the little crowd did not catch.
The men about the stove looked at each other. “Nothin’,” at last blurted Uncle Buck.
“What bus’ness is he a-follerin’ of in New York?” asked Seekins.