“Well, that’s another question. Some says one thing an’ some says another. Likely as not they ain’t nobody knows jest the right of it.”
“Did he an’ Gran’pap quarrel?”
Gabriel pushed the loose dirt from the top of the next hill of potatoes before he answered.
“Well, ef they did quarrel—now mind ye, I ain’t a-sayin’ wuther they did or wuther they didn’t—but ef they did quarrel, it was a quarrel wuth lis’nin’ to, I can tell ye that. I knowed yer pa; knowed ’im like a book; worked right alongside of ’im many a day. Best-natered, best-hearted, best-mannered young feller I ever see in all my life. But”—impressively—“he wouldn’t never let no one set on ’im. W’en he sot out to do a thing he done it wuther or no. An’ w’en he got ’is dander up—well, my gracious! You seen he was a chip o’ the ol’ block then, sure. An’ yer gran’pap! Well, you know yer gran’pap perty nigh as well as I do, an’ you know ’at w’at he ain’t capable uv in the way o’ well-digested contrariness ain’t wuth mentionin’. ’Member the dressin’ down he give ’Squire Biddlecomb las’ spring over that breechy cow o’ his’n?”
Gabriel stopped for a moment to chuckle in delighted remembrance over the incident to which he had referred. Then he continued:—
“So, ez I say, ef they did quarrel, it must ’a’ be’n a rip-staver. An’, ez ol’ Isra’l Pidgin use to say, ‘It takes longer fer a win’fall to grow up with new timber ’an it does to heal up a family quarrel.’”
Gabriel never tired of quoting Israel Pidgin; but, when asked about this oracle, the facts he was able to give were very meagre. “An ol’ feller I use to know up in York state” was usually all the information that could be obtained. There were those, however, who did not hesitate to declare that the supposed sage was wholly a creature of Gabriel’s imagination.
“Heard anything about the new railroad?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly, and digging violently into the bottom and sides of a hill from which he had already thrown out all the potatoes. “Say they’re a-comin’ right down acrost the farm an’ out through the gap to the river.”
Dannie knew that it was useless to question Gabriel further about his father, and he turned away disappointed and vexed.