I
don't think there's much to him."
"He's got a big head, an' he's a mighty bright little fellow," said
Hiram.
"Wall, then he resembles his father in one respect--_he_ had a big
head."
"I'm surprised, Obadiah, to hear you talk the way you do. I ain't
forgot that meetin' in the Town Hall where you got up and owned up
that he was 'bout right, and thet you'd been mean as dirt, but he
shook hands with you, and forgave you like a gentleman as he was, and
I thought you were good friends."
"I'm good friends with anybody that keeps out of my way," said
Strout. "But that Sawyer was like that _malary_ that the boys got off
to war. It gets into your blood and you can't get it out. Why, he
snubbed 'Zeke Pettingill jest the same as he did me when they had
that sleigh ride, and he didn't have spunk enough to hit back. If
'Zeke had jined in with me we'd had him out o' town lively. And then
the way he butted in at my concert and turned a high-class musical
entertainment inter a nigger minstrel show by whistling a tune vas
enough to make anybody mad clean through."
"Wall, you got mad, didn't you?" said Hiram. "What good did it do
yer?"
Mr. Strout's newly aroused wrath was not appeased.
"Then again, the way he squeezed himself in at that surprise party.
Since I married Bessie Chisholm, I've talked to her a good many times
'bout the way she danced with him that night.
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