A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill

								

“I did. You didn't think I lied, did you? Always ready to snatch up a
person's words before they git 'em out of their mouth! The third one is
a boy, Bertie they call him, sick and spin'ly, but a right nice little
fellow. Where'd Chick go?”
“He's settin' out there on the door-step. Did you hear 'bout our
shootin'?”
“Maria was tryin' to tell me, but she didn't seem to have nothin' clear
to tell. Who do you think done it?”
Phineas Flathers, balancing himself on the hind legs of his chair, with
his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, was nothing loath to launch
forth into a full recital of the affair, embellishing it with many a
flourish as he went along. In the bosom of his family he was freed from
those bonds of restraint that embarrassed his utterance when in more
formal society. The amount of profanity that he could dispose of in the
course of an ordinary conversation was little short of astounding. This
being more than an ordinary conversation and his mood being mellow,
called for an extra vocabulary. He graphically set forth the facts in
the case, then gave his imagination full sway in accounting for them.
He interpreted the whole affair as a clash between capital and labor,
a conflict between the pampered aristocrat and the common man. The
shooting was the result of a deep-laid plan: Dillingham and Morley had
met by appointment, moved by what motive he did not make clear, to kill
Sheeley, an honest laboring man. Hadn't the one on horseback, that they
say was Mr. Morley, stopped him at the crossing, on the very afternoon
of the shooting, and engaged him in conversation? Phineas assured his
listeners that he trembled even now when he thought of the danger he had
been in!
“I'd seed him afore that day a ridin' with a pretty young lady, that
most got her neck broke under a engine, but this time he was by hisself,
a settin' there on his horse, as proud as a king and stirrin' me up
about the rich folks not allowing us poor working classes to have no
streets out here. I suspicioned somethin' right then; says I to myself,
'he's got a handsome face but his mind is a well of corruption.' And
when I heard he'd shot Sheeley ...Now what in thunder is the matter with
you, Chick?”
During this recital Chick had been sitting in the doorway, his knees
drawn up to his chin, listening intently, but at this point he cried out
in a sputter of protesting sounds.
“It's the shootin', it's done got on his mind,” explained Maria, winding
her long thin hair into a yet tighter knot at the back of her head. “He
takes on like that every time he hears us talkin' 'bout it, and nobody
can't make out a word he's sayin'. Fer two or three days I couldn't
scarcely git him to eat nothin'.”
“If your cooking ain't any better than it used to be I ain't surprised,”
Myrtella said. “How bad was Sheeley shot, Phineas?”
“Oh, he'll be laid up fer a month yit. They say the retinue of his eye