“You might’s well shet up your wallet,” he said; “P’lermo ain’t sufferin’ for your money, much of it as you seem to have.”
“That money won’t be put up till my debts are paid,” shouted Hiram. The old man’s fishy eye bored him with a significance he could not understand. It was evident that Lysimachus had a trump card.
“You can’t pay, dum ye!” shrieked Uncle Buck, now furious in his turn, with the hysterical rage of the senile.
“Why can’t I?” This also was bawled.
“Because your old father mortgaged his farm after you run away, and then after he died your brother Phin worked and paid off every cent that was owed.”
“Twenty can play as well as one!” said the gray parrot.
Hiram, both hands still full of money, rubbed his forearm across his eyes, into which sweat was streaming. His movement knocked off his hat, and it rolled unheeded in the dust. Pitiful bewilderment wrinkled his face.
“And if you’ve never heard of all that, then you can’t have been any decenter about writin’ home and lettin’ your own know about you than you have been about other things I could name.”
Hiram stood, his arms hanging at his side, his lower jaw drooping, his eye shuttling from face to face evasively.
“Kind o’ makes you drop your tail, Hime—that, eh?” jeered Amazeen from his place in the crowd.