“Lazy, you mean.”
“I always imagined it was an euphemism.”
“My father, sir, your grandfather, old Isaac Bellew, killed a man with a blow of his fist when he was sixty-nine years old.”
“The man?”
“No, your—you graceless scamp! But you'll never kill a mosquito at sixty-nine.”
“The times have changed, oh, my avuncular! They send men to prison for homicide now.”
“Your father rode one hundred and eighty-five miles, without sleeping, and killed three horses.”
“Had he lived to-day, he'd have snored over the course in a Pullman.”
The older man was on the verge of choking with wrath, but swallowed it down and managed to articulate:
“How old are you?”