"You never seed nothin' like that in Augusty, did ye, daddy?" asked Simon, with a malicious wink at Ben.
"Simon, how did you do it?" queried the old man, without noticing his son's question.
"Do it, daddy? Do it? 'Tain't nothin'. I done it jist as easy as—shootin'."
Whether this explanation was entirely, or in any degree, satisfactory to the perplexed mind of Elder Jed'diah Suggs can not, after the lapse of the time which has intervened, be sufficiently ascertained. It is certain, however, that he pressed the investigation no farther, but merely requested his son Benjamin to witness the fact that, in consideration of his love and affection for his son Simon, and in order to furnish the donee with the means of leaving that portion of the State of Georgia, he bestowed upon him the impracticable pony, Bunch.
"Jist so, daddy; jist so; I'll witness that. But it 'minds me mightily of the way mammy give old Trailler the side of bacon last week. She a-sweepin' up the h'a'th; the meat on the table; old Trailler jumps up, gethers the bacon, and darts! Mammy arter him with the broom-stick as fur as the door, but seein' the dog has got the start, she shakes the stick at him, and hollers, 'You sassy, aigsukkin', roguish, gnatty, flop-eared varmint! take it along! take it along! I only wish 'twas full of a'snic, and ox-vomit, and blue vitrul, so as 'twould cut your interls into chitlins!' That's about the way you give Bunch to Simon."
"Oh, shuh, Ben," remarked Simon, "I wouldn't run on that way. Daddy couldn't help it; it was predestinated: 'Whom he hath, he will,' you know," and the rascal pulled down the under lid of his left eye at his brother. Then addressing his father, he asked, "War'n't it, daddy?"
"To be sure—to be sure—all fixed aforehand," was old Mr. Suggs' reply.
"Didn't I tell you so, Ben?" said Simon. "I knowed it was all fixed aforehand," and he laughed until he was purple in the face.
"What's in ye? What are ye laughin' about?" asked the old man wrothily.
"Oh, it's so funny that it could all 'a' been fixed aforehand!" said Simon, and laughed louder than before. The obtusity of the Reverend Mr. Suggs, however, prevented his making any discoveries. He fell into a brown study, and no further allusion was made to the matter.