While the storekeeper's back was turned, Mr. Crabbe rearranged the
checkerboard. He took up two of Mr. Frye's men and put them in his
pocket. Then he winked at Mr. Barly, as though to say: "I'm just a
leetle too smart for him."
Farmer Barly winked back. It amused him to have Mr. Frye beaten
unfairly. Mr. Frye wanted to get his daughter away from him. "Well,"
he said in his mind, to Mr. Frye, "just go easy. Just go easy, Mr.
Frye." And he winked again at Mr. Crabbe. "That's right," he said,
"give it to him."
When Mr. Jeminy left Anna, at the edge of the village, he went to call
on Grandmother Ploughman. He found her in the company of old Mrs.
Crabbe, who had brought her knitting over, for society's sake. Mrs.
Ploughman received him with quiet dignity, due to a sense of the wrong
she had suffered, for which she blamed Mrs. Wicket, and the Democratic
Party. Mr. Ploughman, she often said, had been a good Republican all
his life. Unfortunately, he was dead; otherwise, things would have
been different.
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