“Oh, never mind the money, Bill; the old man’s going to take the bark off of both of us—and besides, with the hand I helt when we quit, I should ’a beat you and won it all any way.”
“Well, but, Massa Simon, we nebber finish de game, and de rule—”
“Go to Old Scratch with your rule!” said the impatient Simon; “don’t you see daddy’s right down upon us, with an armful of hickories? I tell you I hilt nothin’ but trumps, and could ’a beat the horns off of a billy-goat. Don’t that satisfy you? Somehow or nother your d—d hard to please!” About this time a thought struck Simon, and in a low tone—for by this time the Reverend Jedediah was close at hand—he continued: “but maybe daddy don’t know, right down sure, what we’ve been doin’. Let’s try him with a lie—twon’t hurt no way; let’s tell him we’ve been playin’ mumble-peg.”
Bill was perforce compelled to submit to this inequitable adjustment of his claim of a share of the stakes; and of course agreed to the game of mumble-peg. All this was settled and a peg driven in the ground, slyly and hurriedly between Simon’s legs as he sat on the ground, just as the old man reached the spot. He carried under his left arm several neatly-trimmed sprouts of formidable length, while in his left hand he held one which he was intently engaged in divesting of its superfluous twigs.
“Soho! youngsters!—you in the fence-corner, and the crop in the grass? what saith the Scriptur’ Simon? ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard,’ and so forth and so on. What in the round creation of the yearth have you and that nigger been a-doin’?”
Bill shook with fear, but Simon was cool as a cucumber, and answered his father to the effect that they had been wasting a little time in a game of mumble-peg.
“Mumble-peg! mumble-peg!” repeated old Mr. Suggs, “what’s that?”
Simon explained the process of rooting for the peg; how the operator got upon his knees, keeping his arms stiff by his side, leaned forward and extracted the peg with his teeth.
“So you git upon your knees, do you, to pull up that nasty little stick! you’d better git upon ’em to ask mercy for your sinful souls, and for a dyin’ world. But let’s see one o’ you git the peg up now.”
The first impulse of our hero was to volunteer to gratify the curiosity of his worthy sire, but a glance at the old man’s countenance changed his “notion,” and he remarked that “Bill was a long ways the best hand.”