“Good morning, madam,” he said as he lifted his hat and bowed to the lady standing with her pailful of water near the spring.
“Does this spring belong to you, madam?” he inquired.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, if you please, madam, we would like to get some water for the ladies of our party.”
“All right,” came the reply. “There’s a gourd hangin’ up there on that stick, you can take ’em some water in it, I guess.”
“Fine spring you have here, fine farm, too, and plenty of everything growing on it too. Your husband must be a great worker, madam,” he ventured to say.
“He’s dead,” she simply said. “He died las’ month, an’ left me and the children here to do everything.”
“Too bad, too bad!” he said as he looked at her in a kind and benevolent way.
“Yes, I wouldn’t have minded it much,” she called out after him as he went up to the road, “if it ’ed a happened atter the crops wuz gathered.”
The little company in the wagon had heard what the woman had said, and giggled. Paul Waffington saved his own face with the blowing of his nose in his handkerchief. But Boaz Honeycutt swelled up to the danger line, exploded, and said: