"Keerby'll never see as much b'ar's fat ner nothin' else as he can git around!" jeered Gran'dad.
"I'm afeerd he won't," agreed Mr. Doggett. "I'd 'a' kept him longer, he had sech a good sleight at turnin' off work,—done more'n three thirds o' the feedin' ginerally, and ever'theng else accordin'—but the old lady 'lowed she wuzn't goin' to be et out o' house and home ef I wuz. Onct he et so long I thought I'd have to hitch up the team and pull him away from the table."
Dock, the twelve-year-old, small and scrawny, but tough as a hickory withe, who had up to this time lain stretched on his front by a hollow log, skilfully executing with his barlow a colony of ants as fast as they crawled from the rotting section of buckeye, gave a wicked glance at the slender and hollow-cheeked man of fifty sitting near him.
"Mr. Lindsay, he ort to have some o' that b'ar's fat Keerby wuz a tellin' about to make him sortie plump up and look purty to Miss Lucy."
A slow red crept into Mr. Lindsay's sensitive face.
"I don't reckon I need any bear's fat yit, Dock," his voice was low and gentle: "My mother always told me whatever I done, never to starve a woman, and I ain't ready to starve one yit, ef I could git one to have me."
Mrs. Doggett who had come out again with her improvised chip baskets, turned toward him, her black eyes sparkling mischievously.
"Now Mr. Lindsay, ef I wuz a single man like you, that'd been to Texas and Missoury, and seed all over the country you might say,—a man that knows how to keep on the good side o' women folks—a not a trackin' in mud no time, ner never spittin' on the hearth, and always washin' his feet at night in plowin'-time—I'd be plumb ashamed to say I couldn't git no woman to have me!
"Been here in this neighborhood might' night' six year, too, and hain't never said nary word yit as anybody's ever heerd tell of, to keep Miss Lucy Jeemes from settin' thar always with her pa and Miss Nancy! I thenk hit's time he wuz doin' a little courtin' in that direction, don't you, Mr. Brock?"
The best beginning of a man's enmity is the suspicion that another man has a better chance of the regard of a woman he has selected for his own, and though Mr. Brock had sat during Mrs. Doggett's speech with stern inscrutable face that conveyed no hint of his feelings, his heart beat with angry tumult, and within its inmost chamber was born a lusty beginning of hatred toward the pale man sitting on the beech log.