“I’m not stingy!” retorted Elijah hotly. “Would I be keeping my mother, with the poorhouse so handy, and me the youngest, too, if Elijah Skindle wasn’t the most generous man in Chipstone? But I won’t pay for Jinny’s woolgathering. No wonder everybody’s going to the coach!”
“The coach?” repeated Daniel Quarles. “What coach?”
“Hasn’t Jinny told you?” cried Elijah, equally astonished. “The handsomest pair of black horses——”
“A funeral coach?” half-whispered the Gaffer, paling. The notion of slaughtering Methusalem had already brought the thought of death unpleasantly near.
“You and Jinny may well call it so, old sluggaby,” said Elijah grimly.
The old man fell back into his chair. “Nobody never needed no funeral coaches here!” he quavered. “Our shoulders on the corpse-path was good enough for us. ’Twas onny that obstinacious little Dap, when poor Pegs laid by the wall, as wanted one.”
“Who’s talking of funeral coaches?” snapped Mr. Skindle. “Anyhow I’ve got to have that pot changed.”
“Git out o’ my house!” repeated the ancient for the fourth time, hurling the pot out of the window. Luckily it fell on grass.
Elijah’s patience was at an end. Besides it had now occurred to him he might cut off Jinny on the route, away from this tiresome nonagenarian. The effort to woo her through him had been baffled by his inconsequence.
“Who’s hankering after your wooden chairs? I’ve got horsehair at home,” he retorted crushingly.