"Whut's Bushrod Hinkson mekin' conditions fur, I'd lak to know?" exclaimed Mrs. Rogers. "I'll bet it's jes' his stinginess. He'd skin a flea fur its hide an' taller, any day." "He will send his children only on condition that I work out a certain problem which it seems the last two schoolmasters could not solve." "Pshaw!" ejaculated Rogers. "Is he still pipin' on thet ole sum? It's in po'try, ain't it?" "Yes," replied Dudley, taking a slip of paper from his pocket and reading therefrom: "A landed man two daughters had, And both were very fair; To each he gave a piece of land, One round, the other square. "Twenty shillings to an acre, Each piece this value had; But the shillings that could compass it For it just ten times paid. "And if once across a shilling be an inch, As which is very near, Which had the better fortune, The round one or the square?" "Kin you wuck it?" asked Rogers, anxiously. "Oh, yes, I think so. It doesn't seem a very complicated affair." "Bushrod Hinkson sartinly is the crankiest ole somebody I evah hearn tell on," was Mrs. Rogers' verdict. "What diffruns would it mattah ef you couldn't wuck thet fool sum? His two shavers hain't no fu'thah 'long in ther books then my twins, air they, Susan?" "Lawdy!" ejaculated Rogers. "I hope you kin wuck it, an' shet him up fur good an' all. He thinks he knows it all when it comes to figgahs, an' kin siphah fastah'n a hoss kin gallop. It's time somebody took him down 'bout thet ole po'try sum. I'd lak to choke him on it. "Reckon Gilcrest put you through yer gaits, too, didn' he?" Rogers asked presently, removing his cowhide shoes, stretching his legs out in front of the fire, and proceeding, as he explained, "to toast his feet befoh goin' to roost." "Yes, sir," answered Dudley, "and he looked so stern and eyed me so keenly from underneath his grizzled eyebrows that I felt as though I were before the Inquisition." "Jes' so!" Rogers assented, although he had probably never heard of the Inquisition. "Hiram's three hobby hosses air 'good roads, Calvinism and slavery.' Which o' them ponies wuz he ridin' this mawnin'?" "He took a gallop on all three," laughingly answered Abner; "but he rode the doctrinal steed longest and hardest." "Egzactly!" said Rogers, taking a chew of tobacco. "He's daft on good roads; kinder rabid on slavery; but when it comes to the 'five p'ints,' he's rank pizinous. I s'pose he rid the good-roads hoss fust. He ginerly does."