"Because I mustn't let her think that I care for her. I'll go over to Peasley's and wait for Abe there."
"Look here," said the latter. "You both remind me of a man in a Kentucky village who couldn't bear to hear a rooster crow. It kept him awake nights, for the roosters did a lot o' crowing down there. He moved from one place to another, trying to find a cockless town. He couldn't. There was no such place in Kentucky. He thought of taking to the woods, but he hated loneliness more than he hated roosters. So he did a sensible thing. He started a chicken farm and got used to it. He found that a little crowing was too much, and that a lot of it was just what he needed. You two have got to get used to each other. What you need is more crowing. If you saw each other every day you wouldn't look so wonderful as when you don't."
"I reckon that's a good idea," said Bim. "Come on, Harry, let's get used to crowing. We'll start in to-day to fall out of love with each other. We must be very cold and distant and haughty and say every mean thing we can think of."
So it happened that Harry went on with Bim and Abe to the little house in Hopedale. Jack Kelso sat reading in the shade of a tree by his door-step.
"I hope you feel as good as you look," Abe called, as they rode up.
"I've been feeling like a fly in a drum," Jack answered. "I've just heard a sermon by Peter Cartwright."
"What do you think of him?"
"He is saturated in the statistics of vice. His Satan is too busy; his hell is too big, too hot and too durable. He is a kind of human onion designed to make women weep."
Abe answered with a laugh:
"It is said that General Jackson went into his church one Sunday and that a deacon notified Mr. Cartwright of the presence of the great man. They say that the stern preacher exclaimed in a clearly audible tone: General Jackson! What does God care for General Jackson? If he don't repent, God will damn him as quick as he would damn a Guinea nigger.'"