"What are you going to do, Lyman?" the old man asked.
"Nothing. I am satisfied."
"Don't say that, Mr. Lyman," the old woman pleaded. "Don't distress a proud family."
"Madam," Lyman replied, "I am ready to kneel and beg the pardon of a heart in distress, but senseless pride doesn't appeal to me. I can compare families with the McElwins when it comes to that, and putting my judgment aside, I can be as proud as they are. They have money, but that is all, and they would be but paupers compared with the really rich. There are no great names in their family, while from my family have sprung orators, novelists and poets."
"Good!" Miss Annie cried. "I like to look at you when you talk like that."
"I'll bet you ain't afraid of nobody," the old man declared. "I never saw an eye like yourn that was afraid, and a face, nuther. Oh, when it comes to looks, you are there all right. Well, sir," he added, "the town's stirred up. Old Ebenezer is all of a titter. Afraid to laugh out loud, but she's tickled all the same." The old man leaned back with a chuckle, and in his merriment he slowly clawed at the rim of gray whiskers that ran around under his chin. "I like to see a town tickled," he said.
"Never mind, Jasper," his wife spoke up, "your pride may be humbled one of these days."
"My pride," he laughed. "Why, bless you, I haven't any pride. Cousin McElwin knocked it all out of me when he said, and right to my face, that anybody could have arrested the man that choked the sheriff. I knowed then that something was going to happen to him. Knowed it as well as I knowed my name."
The old woman's hand shook and her cup rattled in the saucer as she put it down. "I hope the Lord will forgive you for bein' so revengeful," she said.
"Don't let that worry you, Tobitha," he replied, rubbing his rim of gray bristles. "The Lord takes care of his own, and I reckon your prayers have made me one of the elected."