"The biggest and the best woman I ever saw, or ever hope to see," he began. "I picture her now--as a young, gay creature in her father's shop at the corner of the Dials. Rabbits and caveys and birds he sold and him a sportsman to the marrow. Thirteen stone in her maiden days, they used to say, and very nearly six feet high--the wonder and the joy of the male sex. And 'twas left for you to win that rare female. And you did; and you was the envied of London, 'Dumpling'--the envied of London."
Mr. Shillabeer nodded, sighed heavily, and licked his lips at these picturesque words.
"It brings her back--so large as life--to hear you tell about her. 'Twas the weight she put on after marriage that killed her, 'Frosty,'" he said. "You must see her grave in the burying-ground."
"And take my hat off to it--so I will."
"There's room for me beside her, come my turn, Fogo."
"Quite right--perfectly right. You couldn't wait for the trump of Doom beside a better woman."
Reuben next gave all details of his wife's last illness, and the subject occupied him until midnight when conversation drifted from Mrs. Shillabeer to other matters. They talked until the peat fire sank to a red eye and the air grew cold. Then conversation waned and both heroes began to grow sleepy.
Mr. Shillabeer rose first and concluded the wide survey.
"Ah, 'Frosty,' the days we've seen!" he said.
"I'm with you," answered the poet, also rising. "'Tis all summed up in that word and couldn't be put better,--'The days we've seen!'"