Then he straightened himself to address them.
"Won him in a game of freeze-out," he remarked quite viciously.
"Does he doll Sour-dough up like that all the time?" demanded the
Mixer, "or has he just come from a masquerade? What's he represent,
anyway?" And these words when I had taken especial pains and resorted
to all manner of threats to turn him smartly out in the walking-suit
of a pioneer!
"Maw!" cried our hostess, "do try to forget that dreadful nickname of
Egbert's."
"I sure will if he keeps his disguise on," she rumbled back. "The old
horned toad is most as funny as Jackson."
Really, I mean to say, they talked most amazingly. I was but too glad
when they moved on and we could follow with the bags.
"Calls her 'Maw' all right now," hissed Cousin Egbert in my ear, "but
when that begoshed husband of hers is around the house she calls her
'Mater.'"
His tone was vastly bitter. He continued to mutter sullenly to
himself--a way he had--until we had disposed of the luggage and I was
laying out his afternoon and evening wear in one of the small detached
houses to which we had been assigned. Nor did he sink his grievance on
the arrival of the Mixer a few moments later. He now addressed her as
"Ma" and asked if she had "the makings," which puzzled me until she
drew from the pocket of her skirt a small cloth sack of tobacco and
some bits of brown paper, from which they both fashioned cigarettes.
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