For instance, whenever 'possum was served at the pioneer board they who
partook carried their plates for the purpose to a side table. "The look
of the animal's tail is enough for me--it curls," he would say.
"So does a pig's tail curl," his son used to remonstrate sensibly.
"Not having kept a straight course so long,--then twirling up
deceitfully like a second thought. This fellow is a monstrosity,--and
his wife has a pocket for a cradle,--and I don't know who they are nor
where they came from,--they were left over from before the Flood,
perhaps,--they look somehow prehistoric to me. I am not acquainted with
the family."
And turning his head aside he would wave away the dainty, the delight of
the pioneer epicure time out of mind.
The diplomatic reason, however, that Richard Mivane was wont to shove
off his grandchildren from the arm of that stately chair was that here
they got on his blind side,--his simple, grandfatherly, affectionate
predilection. The touch of them, their scrambling, floundering, little
bodies, their soft pink cheeks laid against his, their golden hair in
his clever eyes, their bright glances at close range,--he was then like
other men and could deny them nothing! His selfishness, his vanity, his
idleness, his frippery were annulled in the instant.
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