"Virge was a fine, upstandin' old
man. You've got the favour of him--if you wasn't a gal."
He evidently shared Schopenhauer's distaste for "the low-statured,
wide-hipped, narrow-shouldered sex."
The girls about the table were all listening eagerly. Johnnie had the
sensation of a freshman who has walked out on the campus too
well dressed.
"Virge was a great beau in his day," continued Pap, reminiscently. "He
liked to wear good clothes, too. I mind how he borried Abner Wimberly's
weddin' coat and wore it something like ten year--showed it off fine--it
fitted him enough sight better than it ever fitted little old Ab. Then
he comes back to Wimberly at the end of so long a time with the buttons.
He says, says he, 'Looks like that thar cloth yo' coat was made of
wasn't much 'count, Ab,' says he. 'I think Jeeters cheated ye on it. But
the buttons was good. The buttons wore well. And them I'm bringin' back,
'caze you may have use for 'em, and I have none, now the coat's gone.
Also, what I borry I return, as everybody knows.' That was your
granddaddy."
There was a tremendous giggling about the board as the old man made an
end. Johnnie herself smiled, though her face was scarlet. She had no
words to tell her tormentor that the borrowing trait in her tribe which
had earned them the name of the borrowing Passmores proceeded not from
avarice, which ate into Pap Himes's very marrow, but from its reverse
trait of generosity.
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