"And what good hit'll do Jappy ef he wins hit, I don't see, considerin' he can't read. I've allus been so busy, the boys hain't had no schoolin', no, sir."
"Joey can read, can't he?" asked his listener.
"Yes, sir—Joey he takes to the book like a lawyer: reads might' nigh ever' book er paper he can lay hand to. Joey, he says when he wuz up at the Castle's a Sunday or two ago, Lisle, he took him in a room that the four walls of, wuz jest one thickness o' books, and Lisle showed him a book he wuz a larnin' in he called the Latins. Dad says hit 'pears like he can't quote no scripture on the Latins. I told him they might 'a' lived in old Pharaoh's time, though that's jest my guess."
"Thar's certain a lot of thengs in the world the most of us don't know nothin' about," conceded Mr. James.
"Yes, sir, that's jest what I wuz a tellin' the boys," went on Mr. Doggett, and inserting his thumb and finger in his inside breast pocket, he pulled out a dark object, the jaw tooth of a horse, and laid it on his host's knee. It had belonged to old Powhatan, a racer buried in the field many years before.
"Here's somethin' I found out in the terbaccer t'other day, I fetched to show you. I thought maybe hit belonged to one o' them creeters that lived before the flood. I showed hit to Lisle Castle, and he said hit wuz a mammon's tooth. I'd a tuck hit to Jedge Robbins,—he has a whole room full o' sech, ef he hadn't 'a' died."
"Who'd they app'int Jedge fer his successor?" inquired Mr. James.
"Hain't you heerd?" Mr. Doggett seemed surprised: "they app'inted old man Perry. Reckon they thought they'd drap a plum to Al's pap, considerin' Al wuz so nigh a gittin' elected assessor last fall—but not quite!"
"And jest defeated by one vote," commented Mr. James.
"Yes, sir," Mr. Doggett laughed, "and that vote wuz Dad's."