“Not exactly,” replied he, surveying my horse with a quizzical smile, “I haven’t been a-driving by myself for a year or two, and my nose has got so bad lately I can’t carry a cold-trail without hounds to help me.”
Alone, and without hounds as he was, the question was rather a silly one; but it answered the purpose for which it was put, which was only to draw him into conversation, and I proceeded to make as decent a retreat as I could.
“I didn’t know,” I said, “but that you were going to meet the huntsmen, or going to your stand.”
“Ah, sure enough,” rejoined he, “that mout be a bee, as the old woman said when she killed a wasp. It seems to me I ought to know you.”
“Well, if you ought why don’t you?”
“What mout your name be?”
“It might be anything,” said I, with borrowed wit; for I knew my man, and knew what kind of conversation would please him most.
“Well, what is it then?”
“It is Hall,” said I; “but, you know, it might as well have been anything else.”
“Pretty digging,” said he, “I find you’re not the fool I took you to be; so here’s to a better acquaintance with you.”