"What's Dave ben up to now ?" she asked.
And then the widow told her story, with tears and smiles, and the keen enjoyment which we all have in talking about ourselves to a sympathetic listener like Aunt Polly, whose interjections pointed and illuminated the narrative.

When it was finished she leaned forward and kissed Mrs.
Cullom on the cheek.
"I can't tell ye how glad I be for ye," she said; "but if I'd known that David held that morgidge, I could hev told ye ye needn't hev worried yourself a mite.

He wouldn't never have taken your prop'ty, more'n he'd rob a hen-roost.

But he done the thing his own way--kind o' fetched it round fer a Merry Chris'mus, didn't he?
Curious," she said reflectively, after a momentary pause, "how he lays up things about his childhood," and then, with a searching look at the Widow Cullom, "you didn't let on, an' I didn't ask ye, but of course you've heard the things that some folks says of him, an' natchally they got some holt on your mind.
There's that story about 'Lish, over to Whitcom--you heard somethin' about that, didn't ye ?" "Yes," admitted the widow, "I heard somethin' of it, I s'pose." "Wa'al," said Mrs.Bixbee, "you never heard the hull story, ner anybody else really, but I'm goin' to tell it to ye--" "Yes," said Mrs.Cullom assentingly.
Mrs.Bixbee sat up straight in her chair with her hands on her knees and an air of one who would see justice done.
"'Lish Harum," she began, "wa'n't only half-brother to Dave.

He was hull-brother to me, though, but notwithstandin' that, I will say that a meaner boy, a meaner growin' man, an' a meaner man never walked the earth.