Here was another transmigrated soul that had traveled farther than I knew. It was in pure curiosity as to the changes wrought in him that I said: “I should think you would have been glad, Lovey. When I was here before you used to want to have us both go back.”
The extinct eyes were raised on me.
“These times ain’t them times. Everything different. I ’aven’t stayed where I was in them days, not any more nor you. Oh, to think, to think!”
“To think what?”
“That you should ’ave come back to this—and me believin’ the war ’ad done ye good—lifted you up, like. Not but what you was the best man ever lived before the war—”
“Oh no, Lovey. No one knows what I was better than yourself.”
“You was good even then, sonny—even in them awful old days. Goodness ain’t just in doin’ certain things; it’s in being certain things. I don’t ’ardly know what it is; but I can tell it when I see it. And I seen it in you, Slim—right from the first. Me and God A’mighty seen it together. That’s why He pulled you up out o’ what you was—and made you rich—and dressed you in swell clo’es—and sent you to the war—and made you a ’ero—and stuck you all over with medals—and brought you ’ome again to me. And if you’d only waited—”
“Well, if I’d only waited—what?”
“You’d ’a’ got somethink better still. You’d ’a’ got it pretty soon.”
“What should I have got?”