“Say, old Angelchum, why didn’t you ever let folks know yer style, instead uv trottin’ ‘round like a melancholy clam with his shells shut up tight? That’s what this crowd wants to know! Now yev opened down to bed-rock, we’ll git English Sam from Sonora, an’ git up the tallest kind uv a rasslin’ match.”
“Not unless English Sam meddles with my business, you won’t,” replied the deacon, quickly. “I’ve got enough to do fightin’ speretual foes.”
“Oh,” said Boston Ben, “we’ll manage it so the church folks needn’t think ’twas a set-up job. We’ll put Sam up to botherin’ yer, and yer can tackle him at sight. Then——”
“Excuse me, Boston,” interrupted Tom Dosser, “but yer don’t hit the mark. I’m from Vermont myself, an’ deacons there don’t fight for the fun of it, whatever they may do in the village you hail from.” Then, turning to the old man, Tom asked: “What part uv the old State be ye from, deacon, an’ what fetched ye out?”
“From nigh Rutland,” replied the deacon, “I hed a nice little place thar, an’ wuz doin’ well. But the young one’s eyes is bad. None uv the doctors thereabouts could do anythin’ fur ’em. Took her to Boston; nobody thar could do anythin’—said some of the European doctors were the only ones that could do the job safely. Costs money goin’ to Europe an’ payin’ doctors—I couldn’t make it to hum in twenty year; so I come here.”
“Only child?” inquired Tom Dosser, while the boys crowded about the two Vermonters, and got up a low buzz of sympathetic conversation.
The old man heard it all, and to his lonesome and homesick soul it was so sweet and comforting, that it melted his natural reserve, and made him anxious to unbosom himself to some one. So he answered Tom:
“Only child of my only darter.”
“Father dead?” inquired Tom Dosser.
“Better be,” replied the deacon, bitterly. “He left her soon after they were married.”