"Well, the butter and the honey may be spiled," said Si, "but the other things are all right. My, ain't this a nice shirt. And them socks. Shorty, did you ever see such socks. Ever so much obliged to you, Pap, for these boots. Old Hank Sommers's make. He's the best shoemaker in the State of Injianny. No Quartermaster's cowhide about them. And—"
Si stopped. He had suddenly come across Anna bel's ambrotype. He tried to slip it into his pocket without the others seeing him. He edged awkwardly to the door.
"You look over the rest o' the things, Shorty," he said, with a blush that hid his freckles. "I've got to go down and see the Orderly-Sergeant."
Shorty and the Deacon exchanged very profound winks.
CHAPTER XVII. THE DEACON'S INITIATION
RAPIDLY ACQUIRES EXPERIENCE OF LIFE IN THE ARMY.
SI ASKED questions of his father about the folks at home and the farm until the old gentleman's head ached, and he finally fell asleep through sheer exhaustion.
The next day the Deacon took a comprehensive survey of the house, and was loud in his praises of Si and Shorty's architecture.
"Beats the cabin I had to take your mother to, Si, when I married her," he said with a retrospective look in his eye, "though I'd got up a sight better one than many o' the boys on the Wabash. Lays a way over the one that Abe Lincoln's father put up on Pigeon Crick, over in Spencer County, and where he brung the Widder Johnston when he married her. I remember it well. About the measliest shack there wuz in the country. Tom Lincoln, Abe's father, wuz about as lazy as you make 'em. They say nothin' will cure laziness in a man, but a second wife 'll shake it up awfully. The Widder Johnston had lots o' git up in her, but she found Tom Lincoln a dead load. Abe wuz made o' different stuff."