I could not refrain from asking him, however, if he had offered Miss Langham his deer-bone tooth-pick.
"No," said he, "she's lent neow, anyway. John Seabright 's got her over to Herrinport. I don't say but what if that 'ar' Langham girl sh'd have a r'al bad spall o' toothache come on, but what I'd let her take her, but I'd jest as soon she didn't know nothin' 'beout it. I'd ruther not make no openin' for a kile."
We sucked our nervine lozenges with mutual earnestness.
"You are getting on finely with the barn," I said, noticing several new rows of shingles on the roof.
"Yes, I sh'd be afoul of her ag'in to-day, only 't Nason come over yisterday and borrowed my lardder. I'm expectin' of him back with her along in the shank o' the evenin'. Preachin' ain't so bad," continued my friend, contemplatively, as the school-teacher passed by; "but I'd ruther be put to bone labor 'n school teachin'. Ye've all'as got to be thar', no marter heow many other 'ngagements——"
"Leezur!" called the soft voice of a Basin matron from the door. "Leezur, have ye fished the bucket out o' the well?"
"Jest baitin' my hook, mother," said my friend, his face breaking into the broadest human beam I ever saw.
He rose, and we walked toward the well. Now first I noticed his gait; every step was a smiling protest against further advancement, which, however, was made not unwillingly.
I observed, too, an illustration of this same smile in his rear, made by an unconscious and loving wife, in a singular disposition of patches: three on his blouse fortuitously representing eyes and nose, and a long horizontal one, lower down, combining with these in an undesigned but felicitous grin.
My friend disclosed this smiling posterior to full view, stretching himself face downward on the earth, and burying his head, with the grappling pole, in the well.