"Well," Lige began to drawl, "I want to finish coverin' my roof before night, for it looks mighty like rain. And I told him I was in a hurry."
"You told him," said the old man. "You did. I have been living here sixty odd year, and so far as I can recollect this is about the first insult flung in upon something I was going to say. Weigh out his nails for him, Jimmie, and let him go. But I don't know what can be expected of a neighborhood that wants to go at such a rip-snort of a rush. Weigh out his nails, Jimmie, and let him go."
"Oh, no!" Lige cried, and Jimmie dropped the nail grabs into the keg.
"Oh, yes," Uncle Buckley insisted. "Just go on with your headlong rush. Go on and don't pay any attention to me."
"Jimmie," said Lige, "don't weigh out them nails now, for if you do I won't take 'em at all."
"Now, Lige," the old man spoke up, "you are talking like a wise and considerate citizen. And now, Jimmie, after this well merited rebuke, are you ready to listen to what I was going to say?"
"I am anxious and waiting," Jimmie answered.
"All right," the old oracle replied. He cleared his throat, looked about, nodded his head in the direction taken by Sam Lyman, and thus proceeded: "Observation, during a long stretch of years, has taught me a great deal that you younger fellows don't know. Do you understand that?"
"We do," they assented.
"Well and good," the old man declared, nodding his head. "I say well and good, for well and good is exactly what I mean. You know that's what I mean, don't you, Jimmie?"