The jolly-jist took off his spectacles, and glowered at Joe without them.

Then he put them on again, and glowered at Joe with them; and then he laughed, and asked Joe, if he thought there could be no difference in stones.
"Why!" answered Joe, "you hardly have the face to tell me that one bag of stones isn't as good as another bag of stones; and surely to man you'll never be so conceited as to say that you can break stones better than old Abraham Atchisson, who breaks them for his bread, and breaks them all day long and every day." With that the old man laughed again, and told Joe to sit down; and then he asked him what he thought made him take so much trouble seeking bits of stone on the fells, if he could get what he wanted on the road-side.

"Well," Joe said, "if I must tell you the truth, I thought you were rather soft in the head; but it made no matter what I thought, so long as you paid me so well for going with you." As Joe said this, it came into his head that it was better to flatter a fool than to fight him; and after all, that there might be something in the old man liking stones of his own breaking better than those of other folks' breaking.

We all think the most of what we have had a hand in ourselves, don't we Miss Sandal?
It's nothing but natural.

And as soon as this run, through Joe's head, he found himself getting middling sorry for the old man; and he said, "What will you give me to get you your own bits of stones back again ?" He cocked up his ears at that, and asked if his "speciments," as he called them, were safe.