"It ain't far," the woman told him, "five miles or so."
"Can I get anyone to drive me back there?" asked Jack, who was pretty well tired out by this time.
"Oh, yes; Abner will drive you over fer a couple of dollars."
She hurried out to tell her husband to hitch up. Jack could hear her shouting her directions in the yard.
"All right. No need uv speaking so loud. I kin hear ye," Jack could hear the deaf man shouting back. "I kin hear ye."
"Just think," said the woman when she came back into the kitchen, where Jack had eaten, "Abner won't admit he's deef one bit. At church on Sundays he listens to the sermon just as if he understood it. If anyone asks him what it was about, he'll tell 'um that he doesn't care to discuss the new minister, but he's not such a powerful exhorter as the old one. He's mighty artful, is Abner."
The rig was soon ready and Jack was on his homeward way. To his annoyance, Abner proved very talkative and required answers to all his remarks.
"Gracious, I'll have no lungs left if I have to shout this way all the way home," thought Jack. "It'll be Husky Bay. If ever I drive with Abner again, I'll bring along some cough lozenges."
"Must be pretty tough to be really, down-right deef," remarked Abner, after Jack had roared out answers to him for a mile and a half.
"It must be," yelled Jack.