"S'pect you won't, neither!" said the man.
The wind, by a sudden puff, lifted into the room a shower of white bloom petals from a sweet apple tree, letting them fall gracefully upon the patchwork carpet, the while a ploughman whistled plaintively in a distant field.
"Crackee! O pap! ouch! O-o-o! You're a killin' me!"
"Shet your mouth 'r I'll split ye to the backbone in a second! Show ye how to run off fishin' with Ed Jones and neglect them pigs! Take every striffin of hide off'n ye!"
How many delightful places in the woods, how many cool spots beside the murmuring river, would have been more pleasant to Billy than the place he just then occupied! He would have swapped hides with the very pigs he had forgot to water.
"O, land! O, me! Geeroody me!" yelled the lad.
"Them poor pigs!" rejoined the father.
Still the dust rose and danced in the level jet of sunlight that fell athwart the room from the east window, and the hens out at the barn cackled and sang for joy over new laid eggs stowed away in cosy places.
At one time during the falling of the rod the girl quit washing the dishes, and thrusting her head into the kitchen said, in a subdued tone:
"My land! Mammy, ain't Bill a gittin' an awful one this load o' poles?"