"I'm going to try it." And Gordon's face lit up. "I don't know much, but I'll do the best I can."
His modesty pleased the other.
"You know more than Jake Dennison, I reckon, except about devilment. I was afred you mightn't be quite up to the place here; you was rather young when I seen you last." He measured him as he might have done a young bullock.
"Oh, I fancy I shall be," interrupted the young man, flushing at the suggestion.
"You've got to learn them Dennison boys, and them Dennison boys is pretty hard to learn anything. You will need all the grit you've got."
"Oh, I'll teach them," asserted Gordon, confidently. The old man's eye rested on him.
"'Tain't teachin' I'm a-talkin' about. It's learnin' I'm tellin' you they need. You've got to learn 'em a good deal, or they'll learn you. Them Dennison boys is pretty slow at learnin'."
The young man intimated that he thought he was equal to it.
"Well, we'll see," grunted the old fellow, with something very like a twinkle in his deep eyes. "Not as they'll do you any harm without you undertake to interfere with them," he drawled. "But you're pretty young to manage 'em jest so; you ain't quite big enough either, and you're too big to git in through the cat-hole. And I allow that you don't stand no particular show after the first week or so of gittin' into the house any other way."
"I'll get in, though, and I won't go in through the cat-hole either. I'll promise you that, if you'll sustain me."