"You think yourselves smart! Why do you laugh in that way?"
"Excuse me - but you have such an odd way of borrowing that I cannot
help it. This bottle, it seems, was brought over for your own
convenience, not for mine. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I have
no whiskey."
"I guess spirits will do as well; I know there is some in that keg,
for I smells it."
"It contains rum for the workmen."
"Better still. I calculate when you've been here a few months,
you'll be too knowing to give rum to your helps. But old country
folks are all fools, and that's the reason they get so easily sucked
in, and be so soon wound-up. Cum, fill the bottle, and don't be
stingy. In this country we all live by borrowing. If you want
anything, why just send and borrow from us."
Thinking that this might be the custom of the country, I hastened to
fill the decanter, hoping that I might get a little new milk for the
poor weanling child in return; but when I asked my liberal visitor
if she kept cows, and would lend me a little new milk for the baby,
she burst out into high disdain.
