The season seemed to have imposed new life into the Chronic Loafer as it had nature. He suddenly tossed off his coat, with one leap cleared the steps and began dancing up and down in the road.
“It jest makes a felly feel like wrastlin’, Gran’pap,” he shouted, waving his arms defiantly at the bench. “Come on.”
The Patriarch stroked his long beard and smiled amusedly at this unexpected exhibition of energy. The Miller’s nose curled contemptuously skyward, and he fell to beating the flour out of his coat to show his indifference to the challenge. The Tinsmith puffed more vigorously at his pipe, so that the great clouds of smoke that swept upward from the clay bowl, enveloped the Storekeeper and caused him to sneeze violently.
At this indisposition on the part of the four to take up the gauntlet he had thrown down, the Loafer became still more defiant.
“Hedgins!” he sneered. “You uns is all afraid, eh?”
“Nawthin’ to be afraid of,” snapped the Miller. “Simple because spring’s come, ez it’s ben comin’ ever since I can remember, I hain’t a-goin’ to waller ’round in a muddy road.”
The School Teacher laid his left hand upon his heart, and fixing a solemn gaze on the roof of the porch, recited: “In the spring the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”
“There ye go agin,” cried the Loafer, “quotin’ that ole Fifth Reader o’ yourn.”
“That,” said the pedagogue, “is Tennyson.”