"Young man," continued Dick, utterly unheeding the explanation,--
"young man, mebbee you onst had an ole--a very ole mother, who,
tottering down the vale o' years, made pies. Mebbee, and it's like
your blank epicurean soul, ye turned up your nose on the ole woman,
and went back on the pies, and on her! She that dandled ye when ye
woz a baby,--a little baby! Mebbee ye went back on her, and shook
her, and played off on her, and gave her away--dead away! And now,
mebbee, young man--I wouldn't hurt ye for the world, but mebbee,
afore ye leave this yar table, YE'LL EAT THAT PIE!"
The stranger rose to his feet, but the muzzle of a dragoon revolver
in the unsteady hands of Whisky Dick, caused him to sit down again.
He ate the pie, and lost his case likewise, before a Rough-and-
Ready jury.
Indeed, far from exhibiting the cynical doubts and distrusts of
age, Daddy Downey received always with childlike delight the
progress of modern improvement and energy. "In my day, long back
in the twenties, it took us nigh a week--a week, boys--to get up a
barn, and all the young ones--I was one then--for miles 'round at
the raisin'; and yer's you boys--rascals ye are, too--runs up this
yer shanty for Mammy and me 'twixt sun-up and dark! Eh, eh, you're
teachin' the old folks new tricks, are ye? Ah, get along, you!"
and in playful simulation of anger he would shake his white hair
and his hickory staff at the "rascals.
Pages:
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84