“If obstinacy would get folks into the kingdom,” she observed, “your chances for bein’ an archangel would be real good, Hiram Salter.”
He let the reel spin, and the coveted fish dart away with the line.
“I always did hang onto an idea like a puppy to a root,” he said. “It’s kind o’ ingrained in my nature; but you’ll know best, Betsy. You’ve got to be ’tarnally unselfish to somebody in order to be happy; and you think it over. See if ’tain’t about time you changed the place and kept the pain.”
He rose, and Betsy did also. For a wonder she didn’t answer him.
“Good-night,” he said. “It was real clever of you to let me come this evenin’.”
He did not even take her hand at parting. He lifted the shabby yachting-cap and looked at her narrow, inscrutable face. “Good-night,” he said again, and was gone down the garden-path.
Betsy remained some minutes standing in the same position.
“I meant to ask him a hundred questions.” The reflection rose at last from the confusion of her thoughts. “He’s such a gump it makes it hard to talk to him; keeps goin’ back to say the same thing over and over, just like a poll-parrot, till he puts me out so I don’t know what I did want to say to him.”
As she went into the cottage, the picture of the upright figure, and the clean, bronzed, weather-beaten face went with her.