"We-ell, Pearlie. How's Ed a-comin' up? He's a middlin' good judge of steers, but I never heard of him knowin' much about grain."
"You didn't, eh," returned Pearlie Halliday, who had gone to school with Jim; "I s'pose you think you've heard of everything, Jimmy Burns. You seem to know a whole lot, for a boy that quit school before he was through the Third Reader."
"I done wrong, for to set in with such sassy company," was Jim's rather feeble retort, as the meat and potatoes arrived and put an end to conversation.
The jumper, on its bouncing but exhilarating way out to the Nixon farm, had travelled three miles of the distance before Daisy's rapid-fire of tricks and talk gave Jim Burns a chance to put the question that lay nearest his heart:
"What did you go an' skedaddle off like that for, and now come back married, Daise? You know what I said to you, that day you was fixin' up my finger after I cut it on the hay-knife. Don't you mind of that? Eh, Daise?"
"Of course I remember it," Daisy looked straight at her questioner, the corners of her eyes twinkling, "I was always throwing out hints, but you were too slow to take them, Jim. A person can't wait forever. I'd have been grayheaded if I'd had to wait till you married me."
"W-what!" Jim Burns pushed his "dogskin" cap back, so he could stare at her better, "what's that you're sayin' to me?"
"I don't chew my cabbage twice," Daisy retorted, dimpling with her effort to keep a straight face.
The situation was beyond Jim Burns' power of tongue. He stared at her dumbly, until his eyes commenced to water; then he threw out an arm and made the whip sing savagely but harmlessly over the backs of the team.
"Get-epp, yous sons-of-mooses, get epp!" he half-yodled, "or I'll skin you alive!"