Braile limbered himself from his splint-bottom chair, and came forward to
the edge of the porch, as if to be sure of spitting quite under the
claybank's body. Not until he had folded himself down into his seat again
and tilted it back did he ask, "Goin' to order a suit?"

"Oh, well!" said Reverdy, with a mingling of disappointed hope, hurt
vanity, and involuntary pleasure.

If he had been deeply moved by the incident which he had tried to make
Braile see with his own sense of its impressiveness, it could not have
been wholly with the hope of impressing Braile that he had stopped to tell
it. His notion might have been that Braile would ridicule it, and so help
him throw off the lingering hold which it had upon him. His pain and his
pleasure both came from Braile's leaving the incident alone and turning
the ridicule upon him. That was cruel, and yet funny, Reverdy had inwardly
to own, as it touched the remoteness from a full suit of black broadcloth
represented by his hickory shirt and his butternut trousers held up by a
single suspender passing over his shoulder and fastened before and behind
with wooden pegs. His straw hat, which he had braided himself, and his
wife had sewed into shape the summer before, was ragged round the brim,
and a tuft of his yellow hair escaped through a break in the crown. It was
as far from a tall hat of fur-colored beaver as his bare feet were from a
pair of high boots such as the stranger at the camp-meeting had worn,
though his ankles were richly shaded in three colors from the road, the
field, and the barnyard. He liked the joke so well that the hurt of it
could hardly keep him from laughing as he thumped his mare's ribs with his
naked heels and bade her get up.

She fetched a deep sigh, but she did not move.