“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.”
“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. I had him looked up by some friends of mine in the city. They said he didn't have much himself, but his father paid his bills. His father jest gave him to understand that if he didn't marry the right girl, with plenty of dough, he wouldn't get much from him.”