"Gosh-a'mighty! And nefer say a word or do a sing to help the occurrences along? Goshens! What a setting-up! Why—say—Seffy, what you set up for?"
Seffy did not exactly know. He had never hoped to practise the thing—in that sublimely militant phase.
"What do you think?"
"Well, Sef—plow straight to her heart. I wisht I had your chance. I'd show you a other-guess kind a setting-up—yassir! Make your mouth warter and your head swim, begoshens! Why, that Sally's just like a young stubble-field; got to be worked constant, and plowed deep, and manured heafy, and mebby drained wiss blind ditches, and crops changed constant, and kep' a-going thataway—constant—constant—so's the weeds can't git in her. Then you ken put her in wheat after a while and git your money back."
This drastic metaphor had its effect. Seffy began to understand. He said so.
"Now, look here, Seffy," his father went on more softly, "when you git to this—and this—and this,"—he went through his pantomime again, and it included a progressive caressing to the kissing point—"well, chust when you bose comfortable—hah?—mebby on one cheer, what I know—it's so long sence I done it myself—when you bose comfortable, ast her—chust ast her—aham!—what she'll take for the pasture-field! She owns you bose and she can't use bose you and the pasture. A bird in the hand is worth seferal in another feller's—not so?"
But Seffy only stopped and stared at his father. This, again, he did not understand.
"You know well enough I got no money to buy no pasture-field," said he.
"Gosh-a'mighty!" said the old man joyfully, making as if he would strike Seffy with his huge fist—a thing he often did. "And ain't got nossing to trade?"
"Nothing except the mare!" said the boy.