"Mr. Douglass!"--said Seth, raising his voice to speak to one of his assistants who was approaching them,--"Mr. Douglass!--you're holding that 'ere plough a little too obleekly for my grounds."
"Very good, Mr. Plumfield!" said the person called upon, with a quick accent that intimated, "If you don't know what is best it is not my affair!"--the voice very peculiar, seeming to come from no lower than the top of his throat, with a guttural roll of the words.
"Is that Earl Douglass?" said Fleda.
"You remember him?" said her cousin smiling. "He's just where he was, and his wife too.--Well Mr. Rossitur, 'tain't very easy to find what you want just at this season, when most folks have their hands full and help is all taken up. I'll see if I can't come down and give you a lift myself with the ploughing, for a day or two, as I'm pretty beforehand with the spring, but you'll want more than that. I ain't sure--I haven't more hands than I'll want myself, but I think it is possible Squire Springer may spare you one of his'n. He ain't taking in any new land this year, and he's got things pretty snug; I guess he don't care to do any more than common--anyhow you might try. You know where uncle Joshua lives, Fleda? Well Philetus--what now?"
They had been slowly walking along the fence towards the furthest of Mr. Plumfield's coadjutors, upon whom his eye had been curiously fixed as he was speaking; a young man who was an excellent sample of what is called "the raw material." He had just come to a sudden stop in the midst of the furrow when his employer called to him; and he answered somewhat lack-a-daisically,
"Why I've broke this here clevis--I ha'n't touched anything nor nothing, and it broke right in teu!"
"What do you s'pose'll be done now?" said Mr. Plumfield gravely going up to examine the fracture.
"Well 'twa'n't none of my doings," said the young man. "I ha'n't touched anything nor nothing--and the mean thing broke right in teu. 'Tain't so handy as the old kind o' plough, by a long jump."
"You go 'long down to the house and ask my mother for a new clevis; and talk about ploughs when you know how to hold 'em," said Mr. Plumfield.
"It don't look so difficult a matter," said Mr. Rossitur,--"but I am a novice myself. What is the principal thing to be attended to in ploughing, Mr. Plumfield?"