"Well, I imagine he isn't likely to get them in the poorhouse," John Abner observed, with his sarcastic smile.
"Of course there isn't the slightest reason why we should help him," Dorinda insisted, as if the deprecating sheriff had started an argument. After a moment's silence she added in a sharper tone, "But you can't possibly let him die in the poorhouse."
Mr. Wigfall, who had occupied a position of authority long enough to feel uncomfortable when he was displaced, shuffled his feet in the rocky path while he fingered uneasily the brim of his hat. "Naw'm," he replied with as much dignity as he could command, and a few minutes later, he repeated in a louder voice, "Naw'm."
Dorinda looked over his head at John Abner.
"It isn't human," she began, and, correcting herself, continued more deliberately: "It isn't Christian to let a man die in the poorhouse because he has lost all he had."
The two men nodded vacantly, and only John Abner appeared unimpressed by her piety.
"Naw'm, it cert'n'y ain't Christian," Mr. Wigfall agreed, with a promptness that was disconcerting.
"He can't possibly be looked after there," Dorinda resumed, as if she had not been interrupted.
"Naw'm, he can't be looked after thar."
For an instant she hesitated. Though she understood that her decision was a vital one, she felt as remote and impersonal to it as if it were one of those historic battles in France, which cost so much and yet were so far away. It even occurred to her, as it had occurred so often during the war, that men were never happy except when they were making trouble. Of course Jason could not be left in the poorhouse. Having acknowledged this much, she, to whom efficiency had become a second nature, was irritated because these slow-witted country officials appeared helpless to move in the matter.