“What ways?”
“Smellin’, for one thing. Ye can smell death just as easy as ye can smell flowers, or the fryin’ o’ fish, or any other smell; and it’s a sign ye’ll never be mistook in.” His ascetic profile was thrown up, with a long sniff through his delicate, quivering nostrils. “I can smell it now—just like the smell o’ liquor.” The profile came down, and he went on, eagerly: “But what I’m tellin’ you is that if I could die to save you from what ye’re beginnin’ to do this day, Slim, I’d do it cheerful. I knowed you was bent on it before ye knowed it yerself. I’ve been a-watchin’ on ye, and follerin’ you about when ye didn’t see me.”
“How did you know?”
“I can’t tell ye ’ow—not no more than I could tell you I knowed it was God. It don’t matter ’ow you know things as long as you know them, does it?”
“Perhaps not.”
“I’ve just been a-livin’ in yer skin ever since ye come ’ome, sonny. It was as if all yer thoughts passed through my mind, and all yer feelin’s through my ’eart. I ain’t much of a ’and at love—that kind of female love, I mean—not now, I ain’t; but I know that when ye’re young it kind o’ ketches you—”
“Stop, Lovey,” I said, warningly.
“All right, Slim, I’ll stop. I don’t need to go on. All I want to say is that you don’t know—you couldn’t know—the fancy I’ve took to you—and I used to think that you kind o’ ’ad a fancy for me, like.”
“So I have.”