This page needs to be proofread.
Dawson & Rudd, Partners.
247

"Oh, no, Billy ain't none onforgivin' to Manuela for ropin' up 'Doby an' weddin' him that a-way; but you see downin' her paw for stealin' the mule that time gets so it makes him bashful an' reluctant.

"'It ain't that I'm timorous neither, nor yet assoomin' airs,' this yere Billy says to me when he brings it up himse'f how he don't go over to 'Doby's, 'but I'm never no hand to set 'round an' visit free an' easy that a-way with the posterity of a gent which I has had cause to plant. This yere ain't roodness; it's scrooples,' says Billy, 'an' so it's plumb useless for me to go gettin' sociable with 'Doby's wife.'

"It's crowdin' close on two years after the infant's born when 'Doby an' Billy gets up their feud which I speaks of at the beginnin'. Yere's how it gets fulminated. Billy's loafin' over by the post- office door one evenin', talkin' to Tutt an' Boggs an' a passel of us, when who comes projectin' along, p'intin' for the New York Store, but 'Doby's wife an' Willyum. As they trails by, Willyum sees Billy—Willyum can make a small bluff at talkin' by now—an', p'intin' his finger at Billy, he sags back on his mother's dress like he aims to halt her, an' says:

"'Pop-pa! Pop-pa!' meanin' Billy that a-way; although the same is erroneous entire, as every gent in Wolfville knows.

"'Which if Willyum's forefinger he p'ints with