“Jed who?” he mimicked, his voice shrill with sarcasm. “Now what in time Jed would it be, if ’twa’n’t Jeddy Conway––our own Jeddy Conway from this very village? What other Jed is there? Ain’t you got no memory at all, when you ought to be proud to be able to say that you went to school with him yourself, right in this town?”
Again Young Denny nodded a silent agreement, but Old Jerry’s feverish enthusiasm had carried him far beyond mere anger at his audience’s apparent lack of appreciation.
“And that ain’t all,” he rushed on breathlessly, “not by a lot, it ain’t! That ain’t nothin’ to compare with what’s to come. Why, right this minute there’s a newspaper writer down to the village––he’s from New York and he’s been stayin’ to the Tavern ever since he come in this morning and asked for a room with a bath––and he’s goin’ to write up the town. Yes sir-e-e––the whole dad-blamed town! Pictures of the main street and the old place where Jeddy went to school, like as not, and––and”––he hesitated for an instant to recall the exact phrasing––“and interviews with the older citizens who recognized his ability and gave him a few pointers in the game when he 69 was only a little tad. That’s what’s to follow, and it’s comin’ out in the New York papers, too––Sunday supplement, colors, maybe, and––and–––”
Sudden recollection checked him in the middle of the tumbled flow of information. Leaning far out over the dash, he put all his slight weight against the reins and turned the fat white mare back into the road with astonishing celerity.
“Godfrey, but that makes me think,” he gasped. “I ain’t got no time to fritter away here! I got to git down to the Tavern in a hurry. He’ll be waitin’ to hear what I kin tell him.”
The thin, wrinkled old face twisted into a hopeful, wheedling smile.
“You know that, don’t you, Denny? You could tell him that there wa’n’t nobody in the hills knew little Jeddy Conway better’n I did, couldn’t you? It––it’s the last chance I’ll ever git, too, more’n likely.
“Twice I missed out––once when they found Mary Hubbard’s husband a-hangin’ to his hay mow––a-hangin by the very new clothes-line Mary’d just bought the day before and ain’t ever been able to use since on account of her feelin’ somehow queer about it––and me laid up to home sick all the time! Everybody else got their names mentioned in the article, and Judge Maynard had his picture printed because it was the Judge cut him down. ’Twa’n’t fair, didn’t seem to me, and me older’n any of ’em.
“And ’twas just the same when they found Mrs. Higgins’s Johnny, who had to go and git through the ice into the crick just the one week in all the winter when I was laid up with a bad foot from splittin’ kindling. I begun to think I wasn’t ever goin’ to git my chance––but it’s come. It’s come at last––and I got to cut along and be there!”