“I was one of ’em. I was clerkin’ for the old man an’ boardin’ in the house, an’ whenever a young feller begins to board in a house where there is a thoroughbred gal, the nex’ thing he knows he’ll be—”
“Buckled in the traces,” cried Bud slapping his leg gleefully, at this, his first product of brilliancy.
The old man smiled: “’Pon my word, Bud, you’re gittin’ so smart. I don’t know what I’ll be doin’ with you—so ’riginal an’ smart. Why, you’ll quit keepin’ an old man’s company—like me. I won’t be able to entertain you at all. But, as I was sayin’ the next thing he knows, he’ll be one of the family.
“So me an’ Kathleen, we soon got spoony an’ wanted to marry. Lots of ’em wanted to marry her, but I drawed the pole an’ was the only one she’d take as a runnin’ mate. So I went after the old man this a way: I told him I’d buy the filly if he’d give me Kathleen. I never will forgit what he said: ‘They ain’t narry one of ’em for sale, swap or hire, an’ I wish you young fellers ’ud tend to yo’ own business an’ let my fillies alone. I’m gwinter bus’ the wurl’s record wid ’em both—Kathleena the runnin’ record an Kathleen the gal record, so be damn to you an’ don’t pester me no mo’.’”
“Did he say damn?” asked Bud aghast—that such a word should ever come from the Bishop.
“He sho’ did, Bud. I wouldn’t lie about the old man, now that he’s dead. It ain’t right to lie about dead people—even to make ’em say nice an’ proper things they never thought of whilst alive. If we’d stop lyin’ about the ungodly dead an’ tell the truth about ’em, maybe the livin’ ’u’d stop tryin’ to foller after ’em in that respect. As it is, every one of ’em knows that no matter how wicked he lives there’ll be a lot o’ nice lies told over him after he’s gone, an’ a monument erected, maybe, to tell how good he was. An’ there’s another lot of half pious folks in the wurl it ’u’d help—kind o’ sissy pious folks—that jus’ do manage to miss all the fun in this world an’ jus’ are mean enough to ketch hell in the nex’. Get religion, but don’t get the sissy kind. So I am for tellin’ it about old man Galloway jus’ as he was.
“You orter heard him swear. Bud—it was part of his religion. An’ wherever he is to-day in that other world, he is at it yet, for in that other life, Bud, we’re just ourselves on a bigger scale than we are in this. He used to cuss the clerks around the store jus’ from habit, an’ when I went to work for him he said:
“‘Young man, maybe I’ll cuss you out some mornin’, but don’t pay no ’tention to it—it’s just a habit I’ve got into, an’ the boys all understand it.’
“‘Glad you told me,’ I said, lookin’ him square in the eye—‘one confidence deserves another. I’ve got a nasty habit of my own, but I hope you won’t pay no ’tention to it, for it’s a habit, an’ I can’t help it. I don’t mean nothin’ by it, an’ the boys all understand it, but when a man cusses me I allers knock him down—do it befo’ I think’—I said—‘jes’ a habit I’ve got.’
“Well, he never cussed me all the time I was there. My stock went up with the old man an’ my chances was good to get the gal, if I hadn’t made a fool hoss-trade; for with old man Galloway a good hoss-trade covered all the multitude of sins in a man that charity now does in religion. In them days a man might have all the learnin’ and virtues an’ graces, but if he c’u’dn’t trade hosses he was tinklin’ brass an’ soundin’ cymbal in that community.