"Wouldn't he come back?"
"I'd have made him if I were you."
"Perhaps you would, and then perhaps you wouldn't. Perhaps you couldn't."
"You don't mean to say, Aaron Bickford, that you let a whippersnapper like that defy you?"
"What could I do against a man eight feet high?"
"Goodness, Mr. Bickford, have you been drinking?" ejaculated his wife.
"No, I haven't been drinking."
"Do you mean to tell me that boy is eight feet high?"
"No, I don't mean to tell you the boy is eight feet high. But I won't answer any more foolish questions till you give me something to eat. I am fairly faint with hunger."