Braile called into the kitchen where Reverdy had remained in the enjoyment of Mrs. Braile's patient hospitality, “Here's your chance, Abel!”
“Chance?” Reverdy questioned back with a full mouth.
“To get that corn of yours ground, and beat Sally home.”
“Well, Squire,” Reverdy said, “I reckon you're right.” He came out into the open space where Braile sat. “Well, I won't fergit this breakfast very soon,” he offered his gratitude to Mrs. Braile over his shoulder, as he passed through the door.
“You're welcome, Abel,” she answered kindly, and when he had made his manners to the impassive Squire and mounted his claybank and thumped the horse into motion with his naked heels, she came out into the porch and said to her husband, “I don't know as I liked your hinting him out of the house that way.”
Braile did not take the point up, but remained thoughtfully smiling in the direction his guest had taken. “The idea is that most people marry their opposites,” he remarked, “and that gives the children the advantage of inheriting their folly from two kinds of fools. But Abel and Sally are a perfect pair, mental and moral twins; the only thing they don't agree in is their account of what became of that snorting exhorter. But the difference there isn't important. If an all-wise Providence has kept them from transmitting a double dose of the same brand of folly to posterity, that's one thing in favor of Providence.” He took up his wife's point now. “If I hadn't hinted him away, he'd have stayed to dinner; you wouldn't have hinted him away if he'd stayed to supper.”
“Well, are you going to have some breakfast?” his wife asked. “I'll get you some fresh coffee.”
“Well, I would like a little—with the head on—Martha, that's a fact. Have I got time for another pipe?”
“No, I don't reckon you have,” his wife said, and she passed into the kitchen again, where she continued to make such short replies as Braile's discourse required of her.
He knocked his pipe out on the edge of his still uptilted chair, as he talked. “One fool like Abel I can stand, and I was just going to come in when Sally came in sight; and then I knew that two fools like Abel would make me sick. So I waited till the Creator of heaven and earth could get a minute off and help me out. But He seemed pretty busy with the solar system this morning, and I had about given up when He sent that Gillespie girl in sight. I knew that would fetch Sally; but it was an inspiration of my own to suggest Abel's chance to him; I don't want to put that on your Maker, Martha.”