The Mills's enmity was well understood, and there were not wanting those
to take Darby's side. He had grown to be the likeliest young man
in the district, tall, and straight as a sapling, and though Vashti
flaunted her hate of him and turned up her little nose more than it was
already turned up at his name, there were many other girls in the pines
who looked at him languishingly from under their long sun-bonnets,
and thought he was worth both the Mills boys and Vashti to boot.
So when at a fish-fry the two Mills boys attacked him and he whipped them
both together, some said it served them right, while others declared
they did just what they ought to have done, and intimated that Darby
was less anxious to meet their father than he was them,
who were nothing more than boys to him. These asked in proof of their view,
why he had declined to fight when Old Cove had abused him so to his face.
This was met by the fact that he "could not have been so mighty afeared,"
for he had jumped in and saved Chris Mills's life ten minutes afterward,
when he got beyond his depth in the pond and had already sunk twice.
But, then, to be sure, it had to be admitted that he was the best swimmer
on the ground, and that any man there would have gone in
to save his worst enemy if he had been drowning.
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