“God A’mighty likes ’em best, I reckon,” declared Mr. Blee.
“Not but what ’t would be a lonesome plaace wi’out the lords of creation,” conceded the widow.
“Ess fay, you ’m right theer; but the beauty of things is that none need n’t be lonely, placed same as you be.”
“‘Once bit twice shy,’” said Mrs. Coomstock. Then she laughed again. “I said them very words to Lezzard not an hour since.”
“An’ what might he have answered?” inquired Billy without, however, showing particular interest to know.
“He said he wasn’t bit. His wife was a proper creature.”
“Bah! second-hand gudes—that’s what Lezzard be—a widow-man an’ eighty if a day. A poor, coffin-ripe auld blid, wi’ wan leg in the graave any time this twenty year.”
Mrs. Coomstock’s frame heaved at this tremendous criticism. She gurgled and gazed at Billy with her eyes watering and her mouth open.
“You say that! Eighty an’ coffin-ripe!”
“Ban’t no ontruth, neither. A man ’s allus ready for his elm overcoat arter threescore an’ ten. I heard the noise of his breathin’ paarts when he had brown kitty in the fall three years ago, an’ awnly thrawed it off thanks to the gracious gudeness of Miller Lyddon, who sent rich stock for soup by my hand. But to hear un, you might have thought theer was a wapsies’ nest in the man’s lungs.”