I wasn't jest on my guard, knowin' him to be a deakin an' all that, an' he lied to me so splendid that I was took in, clean over my head, he done me so brown I was burnt in places, an' you c'd smell smoke 'round me fer some time." "Was it a horse ?" asked Mrs.Bixbee gratuitously.
"Wa'al," David replied, "mebbe it _had_ ben some time, but at that partic'lar time the only thing to determine that fact was that it wa'n't nothin' else." "Wa'al, I declare!" exclaimed Mrs.Bixbee, wondering not more at the deacon's turpitude than at the lapse in David's acuteness, of which she had an immense opinion, but commenting only on the former.

"I'm 'mazed at the deakin." "Yes'm," said David with a grin, "I'm quite a liar myself when it comes right down to the hoss bus'nis, but the deakin c'n give me both bowers ev'ry hand.

He done it so slick that I had to laugh when I come to think it over--an' I had witnesses to the hull confab, too, that he didn't know of, an' I c'd 've showed him up in great shape if I'd had a mind to." "Why didn't ye ?" said Aunt Polly, whose feelings about the deacon were undergoing a revulsion.
"Wa'al, to tell ye the truth, I was so completely skunked that I hadn't a word to say.

I got rid o' the thing fer what it was wuth fer hide an' taller, an' stid of squealin' 'round the way you say he's doin', like a stuck pig, I kep' my tongue between my teeth an' laid to git even some time." "You ort to 've hed the law on him," declared Mrs.Bixbee, now fully converted.

"The old scamp!" "Wa'al," was the reply, "I gen'all prefer to settle out of court, an' in this partic'lar case, while I might 'a' ben willin' t' admit that I hed ben did up, I didn't feel much like swearin' to it.