"
"Come now, Strout, what did she say? She wasn't engaged to you then.
What did she say? Now be honest."
Mr. Strout could not restrain a grim smile.
"Wall, to tell the truth, Hiram, she told me it was none of my
business, an' when I came to think it over I didn't believe it was--
but it would be now."
Mr. Strout's vials of wrath had not all been emptied. He seemed to be
enjoying a rehearsal of all his past troubles and grievances.
"I guess that if the folks had known at first that the Jim Sawyer who
died in the Poor House was his uncle, they wouldn't have considered
him such great shucks after all. An' the way he tried to get Huldy
Mason to marry him and throw over 'Zeke Pettingill, who had loved her
ever since she was a baby, was a mighty mean piece of business in my
opinion."
This remark gave Hiram an opportunity which he was not slow in
improving.
"I heerd as how there was another feller in town who tried to get
Huldy to marry him and throw poor 'Zeke over."
Mr. Strout puckered up his mouth and there was a strained look on his
face which indicated that the shot had gone home. But his verbal
ammunition was not all expended.
"You can tell me what you've a mind to, but I know that he tried
mighty hard to get Lindy Putnam to marry him, an' I don't imagine
he'd have taken up with a blind girl if he hadn't heard that Heppy
Putnam was going to leave her all her money.
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