"But I'm sure you didn't touch the molasses at all."
Jimmie put his hand warningly upon her arm.
Mr. Gamblin did not appear to hear her. He was standing with his legs braced wide apart. His mild mannered spectacles which seemed to have no relations whatever with his eyes stood out at a truculent angle near the end of his nose. His face and neck were very red and he had the look of a man fighting for breath.
"Forty year!" he muttered belligerently, "just like a post in the mud! An' sorry every minute!"
Then he shook himself and strode stubbornly back to the wagon, placed his foot solidly where it had before rested on the hub of the wheel, and renewed his conversation in a loud and defiant tone.
"Yessum, there's as good air right 'round here as there is anywhere, and more of it than there is in most places."
Jimmie wondered sympathetically how many times in the forty years the old man had been called away from some interesting doing by that false alarm about the molasses.
"And what's a little cough anyway?" the old man boomed on resonantly. "Why I had a tarnation mean cough one time, my own self, long about twenty years ago, I figure it was, or twenty-five. Come on in hayin' time and hung 'round till the first frost. That's the cure. The first nip of the dry frost just picks it right out. And there you are, sound as a trivet. Just like a post in the mud!"
"I'm sure you are right," said Augusta. "And I know that Jimmie and I are both tired of drifting. I don't think we will go much farther."
"Well, just mosey 'round and see for yourselves. Maybe you'll find just the place you want. And if anybody asks, tell 'em Jeth—"