And, Bergin? Wal, I’d took Macie’s advice and stayed away from him. But–the stay-away plan hadn’t worked worth a darn. The sheriff, he kept to his shack pretty steady. And one mornin’, when I seen him at the post-office, he didn’t have nothin’ t’ say to nobody, and looked sorta down on creation.
That fin’lly riled Mace. “What’s the matter with him?” she says one day. “Why, havin’ saw the widda, how can he help fallin’ in love with her! She’s the nicest little woman! And she’s learned me a new crochet stitch.”
“Little gal,” I answers, “you’ idear has been carried out faithful–and has gone fluey. Wal, let Cupid have a try. A-course, I was sit on pretty hard in that confab I had with him, but, all the same, I’ll just happen ’round fer a little neighbourly call.”
His shack was over behind the town cooler, and stood by itself, kinda–a’ ashes dump on one side of it and Sparks’s hoss-corral on the other. It had one room, just high enough so’s Bergin wouldn’t crack his skull, and just wide enough so’s when he laid down on his bunk he wouldn’t kick out the side of the house. And they was a rusty stove with a dictionary toppin’ it, and a saddle and a fryin’-pan on the bed, and a big sack of flour a-spillin’ into a pair of his boots.
I put the fryin’-pan on the floor, and sit down. “Wal, Sheriff,” I begun (he had a skittle ’twixt his knees and was a-peelin’ some spuds fer his dinner), “I ain’t come t’ sponge offen you. Me and Macie Sewell had our dinner down to Mrs. Bridger’s t’-day.”
He let slip the potato he was peelin’, and it rolled under the stove. “Yas?” he says; “that so?”
“And such a dinner as she give us!” I goes on. “Had a white oilcloth on the table,–white, with little blue vi’lets on it–and all her dishes is white and blue. She brung ’em from Buffalo. And we had fried chicken, and corn-dodgers, and prune somethin’-’r-other. Say! I–I s’pose you ain’t been down.”
“No,”–kinda wistful, and eyes on his peelin’–“no. How–how is she?”
“Aw, fine! The kid, he ast after you.”
“Did he?” He looked up, awful tickled. Then, “He’s a nice, little kid,” he adds thoughtful.