"
"I guess you're 'bout right," allowed Steve,
"but I shouldn't never 'a' thought of it in the world.
What yer takin' out o' that bottle, Jabe? I thought you
was a temperance man."
"I guess he 's like the feller over to Shandagee schoolhouse,
that said he was in favor o' the law, but agin its enforcement!"
laughed Pitt Packard.
"I ain't breakin' no law; this is yarb bitters," Jabe answered,
with a pull at the bottle.
"It's to cirkerlate his blood," said Ob Tarbox;
"he's too dog-goned lazy to cirkerlate it himself."
"I'm takin' it fer what ails me," said Jabe oracularly;
"the heart knoweth its own bitterness, 'n' it 's a wise child
that knows its own complaints 'thout goin' to a doctor."
"Ain't yer scared fer fear it'll start yer growth, Laigs?" asked little
Brad Gibson, looking at Jabe's tremendous length of limb and foot.
"Say, how do yer git them feet o' yourn uphill? Do yer start one ahead,
'n' side-track the other?"
The tree rang with the laughter evoked by this sally,
but the man from Tennessee never smiled.
Jabe Slocum's imperturbable good humor was not shaken in the very least
by these personal remarks.
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