"Why, certainly," Mary answered, "and sometimes they wouldn't buy any cherries at all."
Gregg rested his head upon the back of the chair and puffed smoke out. "We will pass over the circumstance of his abrupt appearance at the top of the hill, for it is obvious that he might have come from one of the neighbouring villages, although I don't think he did. You yourself admit that his manner of approach was startling, and that it almost seemed as though he had come from nowhere. But let that be. There are, I admit, as yet few facts in support of my theory, but it is at least significant that one of the first questions he[Pg 53] asked should have been, not where he was but when he was."
"Now you can come along with me," he said. "If you like to walk you can, and if you like to pay for a cab I am agreeable. What do you say?"
I don't think I can stand much more of Lock Willow. I'm thinking
"Outrageously tyrannical and despotic," answered Billings hotly. "But jest what you might expect from these Abolition satraps, who're throttlin' our liberties. A white man's no longer got any rights in this country that these military upstarts is bound to respect. But I'm obeyin' the order till I kin git an appeal from it."
"My parole was out at daylight," he said, as they came up. "The sun's now nearly an hour high. I ain't obleeged to be good no more, and I could' 've drapped one o' yo'uns when y' fust turned offen the road, and got away. I s'pose I'd orter've done hit, and I'd a great mind ter, but suthin' sorter held me back. Onderstand that?"
"What we ought to do," Dodd said abruptly, "is we ought to do a thorough anthropological—anthropological study on you people. A really big job. But that's uneconomic, see? Because we know what we have to know. Where to find you, what to feed you, how to get you to work. They don't care about the rest."