"What do you mean?" Mr. Craig enquired, a little ardently. He had noticed David’s emphasis on one particular word.
"I don’t mean nothin’," responded David, making a willow branch his own.
"You seem to doubt a little whether I’ve really been successful or not?" ventured the other, looking interrogatively at his companion.
"Depends," said David laconically; "you’ve been terrible successful outside."
"I don’t just follow you," Mr. Craig declared with deliberate calmness. "I don’t suppose we judge people by the inside of them—at least I don’t."
"I do," answered David nonchalantly. "A fellow can’t help it—look at this here gad; it looked elegant from the outside," holding it up to show the wound his knife had made.
"What’s the matter with it?" Mr. Craig rejoined, pretending to look closely.
"What do you mean by that?" Mr. Craig demanded rather more sharply.
"Then it hasn’t anything to do with the question of success?"
"That’s an awful big question," David answered adroitly, "an’ folks’ll get a terrible jolt in their opinions about it some day, I reckon—like the rich fool got; an’ he thought he was some pun’kins, too. Nobody can’t tell jest who’s a success," he went on, peeling the willow as he spoke. "I reckon folks calls me the holiest failure in these parts—but I’m a terrible success some ways," he went on calmly.
"What ways?" Mr. Craig enquired rather too quickly for courtesy.
"Oh, nothin’ much—only under the bark—if it’s anywheres," David jerked out, still vigorously employed on the willow. "But there ain’t no good of pursuin’ them kind of thoughts," he suddenly digressed, making a final slash at the now denuded branch; "they’re too high-class for a fellow that never went to school after he left it—let’s talk about somethin’ worldly. They say you’re goin’ to be Glenallen’s first mayor; goin’ to open the ball—ain’t that so?"
Abating his pace, Mr. Craig drew closer to David, a pleased expression displacing the rather decided frown that had been gathering.
"To tell the truth, now that you’ve mentioned it," he began confidentially, "that’s the very thing I wanted to talk about. Of course, there’s no use in my pretending I don’t want the office, for I do—the whole thing is in being the _first_ mayor, you see, after Glenallen’s incorporated. Kind of an historical event, you understand—and, and there seems to be a little misunderstanding," he went on a trifle hesitatingly, "between you and me. I find there’s a tendency to—to elect you—that is, in some quarters," he explained, "and I thought we might come to a kind of an agreement, you understand."