"'Twill keep," he answered; "an' I've got a bit of business with Jim here. Yer projeck ain't no secret, be it, Jim?"
"No," replied Jim. "I was just tellin' Miss Amy, an' askin' her to do up the sums about it; but"—lowering his voice, and ignorant of the laws of acoustics, by virtue of which I heard every word from my position—"she ain't none too smart at sums if she has had such a lot of schoolin', an' she didn't make it out real nice and clear like. But you can speak out. She knows, an' is agreeble, an' says she'll help. She's awful generous, like the rest of 'em, Miss Amy is."
With this little salve to the wounds which my filial pride and personal vanity had received, he raised his voice once more, quite unnecessarily, and continued,—
"Miss Amy, Captain Yorke's got somethin' to say' bout what we was just talkin' of. Go on, captain; Miss Amy don't mind."
"I was jes' goin' to tell you what I been an' done," drawled the old man, raising his hat with one hand, and rubbing up his grizzled locks with the other, as was his wont when he was talking at length,—he generally did talk at length when he talked at all. "You've jes' about made up yer mind to do that undertakin', haven't yeou? That peanut-undertakin', I mean."
Jim gave a prompt and decided assent.
"All right. So far so good, an' better too," said the captain, rather illogically; "for if you hadn't, maybe I'd a been a little too forehanded, as it were; but it was my opinions you'd made up yer mind for it, so I acted accordin' an' brought 'em along."
"Brought who along?" asked Jim impatiently.
"I'm jes' goin' to tell ye," continued the old man. "Don't yeou be in too great a hurry. Things takes time to tell when there's any thin' in 'em worth tellin'; not that I'm no great hand on a long story, for I allers was a man of few words; an' Mis' Yorke she can allers tell a story more to the pint than me, or than any one I know on—bless her heart."—Certainly the old man's loyalty to, and affection for, his dear motherly wife was beautiful to see and hear.—"But she ain't here to tell, an', what's more, she don't know nothin' 'bout it to tell. She ain't the kind to go on talkin', talkin' 'bout things she don't know nothin' 'bout; or, s'pose she does know somethin' 'bout 'em, to go yarnin', yarnin' on forever an' a day, an' never gettin' to the pint, like to Mis' Clay,—ye've seen Mis' Clay, ain't ye? She's Mis' Yorke's cousin, comes over from Millville now an' then, an' the powerfullest han' to talk, an' never comin' to the pint, an' never givin' anybody else the chance."
Mrs. Clay was the captain's pet grievance, and almost the only person of whom we ever heard him speak disparagingly; his objection to her probably being founded on the ground that she never gave him "a chance."