“He was a bonkka man, your feyther,” he observed at last. “Wery big-built, and it’s a middlin’ weeny window.”
V
Though Jinny winced at her grandfather’s attacks on the Peculiar Faith of her angel mother, she grew in time to understand the odd magnanimity he had evinced in letting her go to Sunday-school with the Flynt family and pick up the doctrine. That her one surviving child should be brought up of the sect that had saved it, was, it transpired, poor Emma’s dying request, as conveyed by his sister Susannah Dap to the unforgiving father, whose oath never to cross his daughter’s doorstep still held when he drew up Methusalem at it after the double funeral, and found the house empty even of Jinny.
“ ‘Child-stealin’, that’s what it is,’ Oi told Pegs when Oi boarded the Watch Wessel,” he recounted once to his granddaughter in the cart. “ ‘Ain’t you got enough o’ your own?’ says Oi. ‘’Twas through your havin’ one too many that Jinny’s here at all,’ Oi says. ‘Then,’ says she, sharp as a needle, ‘the more reason she’s mine. You cut off her mother,’ says she, ‘and now, Daniel, Jinny cuts you off.’ ‘Not so fast, sister,’ says Oi. ‘Whatever my conduct to Emma—and folks with stone eyes don’t allus see through stone walls—the poor little brat haven’t enough sense to cut me off, and Oi don’t cut her off, for Oi ain’t got to wisit sins to the fourth generation, not bein’ the Almighty, thank the Lord. That’s my lawful property, Pegs,’ Oi says, ‘and same as you don’t hand her over, Oi’ll summons you and carry off two o’ yourn in my cart—and what’s more Oi’ll ill-treat ’em cruel and hide ’em twice a day with my whip.’ ”
“You didn’t mean it,” said Jinny.
“Dedn’t Oi, though?”
“But they were your nephews and nieces!”
“The more right to wallop ’em. You should ha’ seen Pegs climb down. She know’d well as Oi never broke my word, she bein’ o’ the same forthright family. Right up and down, Jo Perry, as the sayin’ goos. Do to others as they’d like to do to you—that’s good Christian gospel. Pegs she went as pale as a white butterfly and hiked you out on deck in your little yaller frock lookin’ as pritty as a gay. Lord, Oi reckonized you on the nail, though Oi’d never clapped eyes on you afore.”
“You’d never seen me before?” cried Jinny, amazed.
“How could Oi see you—you came arter the Tommy Devil was at the bottom, and your feyther never got the dubs from the insurance company, bein’ a flaw in the articles as swallered up all the rest of his cash in the lawsuit. But you’d got his ways and your mother’s looks”—Jinny flushed with pleasure—“and ’steddy cuttin’ me off, you—ha, ha, ha!—made straight for my great ole beard and pulled out a great ole fistful.”