Mrs. Bixbee went on with her needlework, with an occasional side glance at her brother, who was immersed in the gospel of his politics. Twice or thrice she opened her lips as if to address him, but apparently some restraining thought interposed. Finally, the impulse to utter her mind culminated. “Dave,” she said, “d’ you know what Deakin Perkins is sayin’ about ye?”
David opened his paper so as to hide his face, and the corners of his mouth twitched as he asked in return, “Wa’al, what’s the deakin sayin’ now?”
“He’s sayin’,” she replied, in a voice mixed of indignation and apprehension, “thet you sold him a balky horse, an’ he’s goin’ to hev the law on ye.” David’s shoulders shook behind the sheltering page, and his mouth expanded in a grin.
“Wa’al,” he replied after a moment, lowering the paper and looking gravely at his companion over his glasses, “next to the deakin’s religious experience, them of lawin’ an’ horse-tradin’ air his strongest p’ints, an’ he works the hull on ’em to once sometimes.”
The evasiveness of this generality was not lost on Mrs. Bixbee, and she pressed the point with, “Did ye? an’ will he?”
“Yes, an’ no, an’ mebbe, an’ mebbe not,” was the categorical reply.
“Wa’al,” she answered with a snap, “mebbe you call that an answer. I s’pose if you don’t want to let on you won’t, but I do believe you’ve ben playin’ some trick on the deakin, an’ won’t own up. I do wish,” she added, “that if you hed to git rid of a balky horse onto somebody you’d hev picked out somebody else.”
“When you got a balker to dispose of,” said David gravely, “you can’t alwus pick an’ choose. Fust come, fust served.” Then he went on more seriously: “Now I’ll tell ye. Quite a while ago—in fact, not long after I come to enjoy the priv’lidge of the deakin’s acquaintance—we hed a deal. I wasn’t jest on my guard, knowin’ him to be a deakin an’ all that, an’ he lied to me so splendid that I was took in, clean over my head, he done me so brown I was burnt in places, an’ you c’d smell smoke ’round me fer some time.”
“Was it a horse?” asked Mrs. Bixbee gratuitously.
“Wa’al,” David replied, “mebbe it had ben some time, but at that partic’lar time the only thing to determine that fact was that it wa’n’t nothin’ else.”
“Wa’al, I declare!” exclaimed Mrs. Bixbee, wondering not more at the deacon’s turpitude than at the lapse in David’s acuteness, of which she had an immense opinion, but commenting only on the former. “I’m ’mazed at the deakin.”
“Yes’m,” said David with a grin, “I’m quite a liar myself when it comes right down to the hoss bus’nis, but the deakin c’n give me both bowers ev’ry hand. He done it so slick that I had to laugh when I come to think it over—an’ I had witnesses to the hull confab, too, that he didn’t know of, an’ I c’d ’ve showed him up in great shape if I’d had a mind to.”
“Why didn’t ye?” said Aunt Polly, whose feelings about the deacon were undergoing a revulsion.
“Wa’al, to tell ye the truth, I was so completely skunked that I hadn’t a word to say. I got rid o’ the thing fer what it was wuth fer hide an’ taller, an’ stid of squealin’ ’round the way you say he’s doin’, like a stuck pig, I kep’ my tongue between my teeth an’ laid to git even some time.”
“You ort to ’ve hed the law on him,” declared Mrs. Bixbee, now fully converted. “The old scamp!”
“Wa’al,” was the reply, “I gen’all prefer to settle out of court, an’ in this partic’lar case, while I might ’a’ ben willin’ t’ admit that I hed ben did up, I didn’t feel much like swearin’ to it. I reckoned the time ’d come when mebbe I’d git the laugh on the deakin, an’ it did, an’ we’re putty well settled now in full.”
“You mean this last pufformance?” asked Mrs. Bixbee. “I wish you’d quit beatin’ about the bush, an’ tell me the hull story.”
“Wa’al, it’s like this, then, if you will hev it. I was over to Whiteboro a while ago on a little matter of worldly bus’nis, an’ I seen a couple of fellers halter-exercisin’ a hoss in the tavern yard. I stood ’round a spell watchin’ ’em, an’ when he come to a standstill I went an’ looked him over, an’ I liked his looks fust rate.
“ ‘Fer sale?’ I says.
“ ‘Wa’al,’ says the chap that was leadin’ him, ‘I never see the hoss that wa’n’t if the price was right.’
“ ‘Your’n?’ I says.
“ ‘Mine an’ his’n,’ he says, noddin’ his head at the other feller.
“ ‘What ye askin’ fer him?’ I says.
“ ‘One-fifty,’ he says.
“I looked him all over agin putty careful, an’ once or twice I kind o’ shook my head ’s if I didn’t quite like
