“Sech carryin’ on fur Sunday night,” stormed the old man, upon the recovery of his teeth. “I’m ashamed of you, Tommy Weir. Yes, I be. This other boy wasn’t wantin’ to fight. You’re the one who started it.”
“I’m going to knock his block off.”
NO KID CAN SCRAP AND SNEEZE AT THE SAME TIME.
Poppy Ott’s Pedigreed Pickles. Page [176]
“That’s enough from you, young man,” came in thundering tones. “You go right over there an’ set down on that bed. An’ if you give me any more trouble I’m a-goin’ to lay you across my knee.”
“Aw!...” says Poppy, sort of buttoning himself together after the fracas. “He’s all right. Let him be.”
The old man then went at us with a bunch of questions. He was shrewd about it, too.
“I kin see,” he nodded in conclusion, “that you boys know a great deal more about the secrets of the old stone house than you’re willin’ to admit. An’ now that you’ve followed Tommy here, I kin imagine that you’re curious to know who we be. To that p’int, to encourage frankness on your side, too, I don’t mind tellin’ you that my name is Abner Weir, more commonly known in Rimtown, Ohio, where our home is, as ‘Uncle Ab.’ Fortune has made me a nepher of the old rascal who built that house across the river. Asa Weir an’ Severn Weir, my father, was brothers, Asa bein’ much the oldest. Tommy, here, my nepher, is the only child of my brother. His ma an’ pa are dead. They’s jest me an’ him left in the family.”
Pausing, the speaker then regarded us intently for a moment or two. He seemed to be studying us. He realized, of course, that we were treasure hunting on our own hook. We hadn’t admitted it; but he knew! And being in the game, too, I could imagine that he was sort of figuring how he could draw us out without saying too much himself.
“Now, if me an’ Tommy was desperate characters,” he went on steadily, “we could easy enough rope you up an’ keep you here, seein’ as how you’re workin’ ag’in’ us. We probably could make you tell things, too, to our interests. But, frankly, we hain’t people of that sort. Tommy, of course, is kind of hot-headed, as you jest saw. But that hain’t nothin’ ag’in’ him to speak of. I used to be hot-headed myself when I was his age. An’ even to-day if I’m woke up sudden I start pitchin’ things. The other mornin’ I pitched a fryin’ pan. Jest missed Tommy’s head, too. So that is why he woke me up to-night with the talkin’ machine. The one big p’int is, as I see it, air we goin’ to turn you loose, to further work ag’in’ us, or, in fairness to us, would you first like to hear our story to sort of decide in your own minds whether or not it might not be best for you to work with us?”