"Ef it'll do you any good to know," Mr. Sanders remarked, "me an' Jonas feel exactly the same way; an' what's more, we don't intend that Randall shall be run off. He's right here on this lot, an' here he's a-gwine to stay, ef I have any sesso in the matter. I'll pay his board, Jonas, ef that'll suit you, bekaze I've got a crow to pick wi' ol' Tuttle, an' when I git it picked he'll have more loose feathers than he kin walk off wi'. Jest mark that down."
"Pish-tush!" exclaimed old Jonas, smacking his thin lips, and frowning. He rose and went to the back door, and presently the others heard him calling Randall, who seemed to be somewhat slow in answering—so much so that Lucindy's voice was added to his.
"Randall!" she cried, "what in de name er goodness you doin' in dar? Don't you hear Mr. Whipple hollain' atter you? Look like you des ez triflin' now as what you wuz when you loped off!"
Randall replied after a while, and old Jonas's command was, "Come here, you no account scoundrel, and black my shoes!"
"Why, Jonas," said Mr. Sanders, when the former had returned to the room, "ain't you afraid you'll take cold? You ain't had your shoes blacked sence the war!"
The only reply old Jonas made to that was in the shape of a scowl. Randall came running with a puzzled expression on his face. He dropped his hat somewhere outside the door, and went in.
"They tell me," said old Jonas, somewhat curtly, "that you are studying to be a bishop."
"That's what I laid off in my mind, suh. It come to me when I hear um prayin' an' singin'; I allow to myself, I did, that ef it's all ez purty an' ez nice ez that, they wa'n't nothin' gwine to keep me from bein' a minister when the time got ripe. That's what I said to myself, suh."
"Well," remarked Mr. Sanders, reassuringly, "you've already got to be a Boogerman, an' I reckon that's long step forrerd."
"Black my shoes!" commanded old Jonas in a tone that was almost brutal. Randall hustled around until he found an old box of blacking that had been in the kitchen for many years. With this and an old brush that Lucindy found in some impossible place, he proceeded to give old Jonas's shoes a polish that caused them to shine brightly.