“Why, that chunk of ice weren’t so awful big, anyhow. I’d ’a’ shoved her off with a pole. Wouldn’t you?”
“Butted her like a ram,” exclaimed Mr. McLean.
“Well, I don’t say my prayers any more. I told Mr. Perkins I wasn’t a-going to, an’ he—I think he’s a flubdub, anyway.”
“I’ll bet he is!” said Lin, sympathetically. He was scarcely a prudent guardian.
“I told him straight, an’ he looked at me, an’ down he flops on his knees. An’ he made ’em all flop, but I told him I didn’t care for them putting up any camp-meeting over me; an’ he says, ‘I’ll lick you,’ an’ I says, ‘Dare you to!’ I told him mother kep’ a-licking me for nothing, an’ I’d not pray for her, not in Sunday-school or anywheres else. Do you pray much?”
“No,” replied Lin, uneasily.
“There! I told him a man didn’t, an’ he said then a man went to hell. ‘You lie; father ain’t going to hell,’ I says, and you’d ought to heard the first class laugh right out loud, girls an’ boys. An’ he was that mad! But I didn’t care. I came here with fifty cents.”
“Yu’ must have felt like a millionaire.”
“Ah, I felt all right! I bought papers an’ sold ’em, an’ got more an’ saved, an’ got my box an’ blacking outfit. I weren’t going to be licked by her just because she felt like it, an’ she feeling like it most any time. Lemme see your pistol.”