"Old man's been 'spectin' ye for a week," Jim rambled on as he led the
way to the shed, hitching up his one leather suspender that kept the
brown overalls snug up under his armpits. "P'raps ye expected him to
meet ye," he continued, "but ye don't know him. He ain't that kind. He
won't go even for Ruby."
"Who's Ruby?" The brother brush had not mentioned him. "Mr. Marvin's
son?"
"No, she's Mother Marvin's girl. She's away to Plymouth to school.
Stand here a minute till I back up the buck-board."
The buck-board is the only vehicle possible over these mountain-roads.
It is the _volante_ of the Franconia range, and rides over everything
from a bowlder to a wind-slash. This particular example differed only in
being a trifle more rickety and mud-bespattered than any I had seen; and
the mare had evidently been foaled to draw it--a fur-coated,
moth-eaten, wisp-tailed beast, tied to the shafts with clothes-lines and
scraps of deerhide--a quadruped that only an earthquake could have
shaken into nervousness.
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