“Why, what's the hurt, gran'pa?” demanded the young man, though he rose and did as he was bidden. “If 'twas a fiddle, now, there would be some danger of a crash, but a big book like that seems naturally made to sit upon.”
The old man answered him mildly:—
“I have learned to venerate books, Ned, and can no more bear to see them abused than I could bear to be abused myself. It seems to me like treating their writers and their subjects with scorn. If you were to contemplate the venerable heads of the old knights with my eyes and feelings, you would see why I wish to guard them from everything like disrespect.”
“Well, I beg their pardon—a thousand pardons! I meant no offence, gran'pa—and can't help thinking that it's all a notion of yours, your reverencing such old Turks and Spaniards that have been dead a thousand years. They were very good people, no doubt, but I'm thinking they've served their turn; and I see no more harm in squatting upon their histories than in walking over their graves, which, if I were in their country of Jericho—that was where they lived, gran'pa, wa'n't it?—I should be very apt to do without asking leave, I tell you.”
Ned Hinkley purposely perverted his geography and history. There was a spice of mischief in his composition, and he grinned good-naturedly as he watched the increasing gravity upon the old man's face.
“Come, come, gran'pa, don't be angry. You know my fun is a sort of fizz—there's nothing but a flash—nothing to hurt—no shotting. But where's Bill Hinkley, gran'pa?”
“Gone to the widow Cooper's, to see Margaret.”
“Ah! well, I'm glad he's made a beginning. But I'd much rather he'd have seen the other first.”
“What other do you mean?” demanded the old man; but the speaker, though sufficiently random and reckless in what he said, saw the impolicy of allowing the purpose of his cousin in regard to Stevens to be understood. He contrived to throw the inquirer off.
“Gran'pa, do you know there's something in this fellow Stevens that don't altogether please me? I'm not satisfied with him.”