“Not he. ’Twas Jinny told him to send the adder. He’d ha’ kept your sixpence and let you whistle for your sarpint. But next time you want an adder, you come to me.”
“Do you sell ’em too?” he murmured, surprised.
“Oi be an adder!”
“What do you mean?”
His spectacles glowed strangely. “Read your Bible, young man—Dan is an adder in the path, what biteth the horse’s heels, so that the rider should fall backwards—that’s the blessing of Jacob—and let no man try to ride roughshod over the likes o’ me.”
Will shrank back before the passion of his words. Indeed in that gloomy old barn he began to feel a bit nervous.
“I’ve brought a note for Jinny,” he said hastily. “Will you give it to her?”
The old man took the cocked-hat. “Mr. Daniel Quarles!” he read slowly. “But it’s for me!”
Will’s blush was now papaverous. “No—no!” he stammered. It was a conjuncture he had not foreseen.
The fire in the old eye leapt up at the contradiction, shot through the spectacles. “Plain as a pikestaff—Mr. Daniel Quarles! And then you has the imperence to say there ain’t no thieves. But ye can’t bamboozle me. Oi could read afore you could woipe your nose with a muckinger, ay, and my feyther afore me. Carriers ha’ we been for over a hundred year, and my big brother Sidrach he had his own pack-horses loaded up with waluable stuff and writ me a piece ten year ago come haysel, sayin’ as he hoped Oi should jarney to see him, and please God Oi will, he gittin’ old.”