"I'm as I was made," rejoined the other. "I didn't ax to be born an' I've had to work powerful hard for my keep." Taking the glass of blackberry wine from Molly's hand, he smacked his lips over it with lingering enjoyment.
"Do you feel better, grandfather?" inquired the girl, in the pause.
"The wine does me good, honey, but thar's a queer gone feelin' inside of me. I'm twenty years younger than you, old Adam, but you've got mo' youth left in you than I have."
"'Tis my powerful belief in the Lord," chuckled the elder, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and placing the glass on the end of the bench. "No, no, Reuben, when it comes to that I ain't any quarrel with folks for lookin' al'ays at the pleasant side, but what staggers me is why they should take it as a merit to themselves when 'tis nothin' less than a weakness of natur. A man might jest as well pride himself that he can't see out of but one eye or hear out of but one ear as that he can't see nothin' but good when evil is so mixed up into it. Thar ain't all of us born with the gift of logic, but even when we ain't we might set silent an' listen to them that is."
A south wind, rising beyond the river, blew over the orchard, and the barred shadows swung back and forth on the grass.
"'Tis the eye of sense we see with," remarked Reuben quietly.
"Eh, an' 'tis the eye of sense you're weak in," responded old Adam. "I knew a blind man once that had a pictur of the world in his mind jest as smooth an' pretty as the views you see on the backs of calendars—with all the stink-weeds an' the barren places left out of it—an' he used to talk to us seein' ones for all the earth as if he were better acquainted with natur than we were."
"I ain't larned an' I never pretended to be," said Reuben, piously, "but the Lord has used me well in His time an' I'm thankful to Him."
"Now that's monstrous odd," commented the ancient cynic, "for lookin' at it from the outside, I'd say He'd used you about as bad as is His habit in general."
He rose from the bench, and dusted the seat of his blue overalls, while he gazed sentimentally over the blossoming orchard. "'Tis the seventeenth of April, so we may git ahead with plantin'," he remarked. "Ah, well, it's a fine early spring an' puts me in mind of seventy years ago when I was courtin'. Thar ain't many men, I reckon, that can enjoy lookin' back on a courtin' seventy years after it is over. 'Tis surprisin' how some things sweeten with age, an' memory is one of 'em."