“You stir till I tell you, an’ I’ll stomp your nose down even with the balance of your mean face. ’Tain’t exactly my business how you cheated Mr. Fluker, though, ’pon my soul, I never knowed a trifliner, lowdowner trick. But _I_ owed you myself for your talkin’ ’bout and your lyin’ ’bout me, and now I’ve paid you; an’ ef you only knowed it, I’ve saved you from a gig-whippin’. Now you may git up.” “Here’s his dollar, Sim,” said Mr. Fluker, throwing it out of the window. “Nervy say make him take it.” The vanquished, not daring to refuse, pocketed the coin, and slunk away amid the jeers of a score of villagers who had been drawn to the scene. In all human probability the late omission of the shaking of Sim’s and Marann’s hands was compensated at their parting that afternoon. I am more confident on this point because at the end of the year those hands were joined inseparably by the preacher. But this was when they had all gone back to their old home; for if Mr. Fluker did not become fully convinced that his mathematical education was not advanced quite enough for all the exigencies of hotel-keeping, his wife declared that she had had enough of it, and that she and Marann were going home. Mr. Fluker may be said, therefore, to have followed, rather than led, his family on the return. As for the deputy, finding that if he did not leave it voluntarily he would be drummed out of the village, he departed, whither I do not remember if anybody ever knew. FOOTNOTES: [20] From _The Century Magazine_, June, 1886; copyright, 1886, by The Century Co.; republished in the volume, _Mr. Absalom Billingslea, and Other Georgia Folk_ (1888), by Richard Malcolm Johnston (Harper & Brothers). THE NICE PEOPLE[21] By Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855–1896) “They certainly are nice people,” I assented to my wife’s observation, using the colloquial phrase with a consciousness that it was anything but “nice” English, “and I’ll bet that their three children are better brought up than most of——” “_Two_ children,” corrected my wife. “Three, he told me.” “My dear, she said there were _two_.” “He said three.” “You’ve simply forgotten. I’m _sure_ she told me they had only two—a boy and a girl.” “Well, I didn’t enter into particulars.” “No, dear, and you couldn’t have understood him. Two children.” “All right,” I said; but I did not think it was all right. As a nearsighted man learns by enforced observation to recognize persons at a distance when the face is not visible to the normal eye, so the man with a bad memory learns, almost unconsciously, to listen carefully and report accurately. My memory is bad; but I had not had time to forget that Mr. Brewster Brede had told me that afternoon that he had three children, at present left in the care of his mother-in-law, while he and Mrs. Brede took their summer vacation. “Two children,” repeated my wife; “and they are staying with his aunt Jenny.”