He at once accepted the not very gracious invitation, and sat down on one of the wooden chairs, which she dusted for him.
“And so you’re come at last. You didn’t hurry yourself.”
“No, I didn’t hurry myself, but I meant to come.”
“Well, I thought it was odd if you didn’t, and her your favorite as she always was.”
“Yes, that’s true. But that was in the old days, when I was sentimental. If it had happened when I first went away, with nothing but the shirt on my back and my mother’s Bible, I should have worked my passage home by the next boat, and run amuck among these fine gentlemen till I got the right one by the throat. But when it did happen, I’d got sheep farms of my own, and a wife and family, and was making my pile. So I let justice wait till my liver wanted a change. But it’ll be justice none the less for that.”
The woman stood with her arms akimbo, regarding him solemnly. Indeed all capacity for gaiety or even cheerfulness seemed to be dead in her.
“Well,” she said, presently, “and what do you want with me?”
“You can tell me something, or else I’ve been made a fool of.”
“Yes, that’s right enough. I can tell you something. It’s been on my mind this ten year, and it’s what has made an old woman of me before my time. You remember me, ‘flirting Mattie’ they called me then, and I don’t say but what I was as good as my name. There were a pair of us, they said; and we were together a good deal. ‘Birds of a feather,’ you know. But Nell was always closer than me; if I fancied anybody, all the world might know. But she, she’d carry on with half a dozen, and you might never know which was the one she’d a liking for, or if it was in her to care for anybody. It wasn’t for a long time I myself guessed there was something up—not till she grew mopish and fidgety like, and set me wondering. For awhile she’d own to nothing, and it wasn’t till one day I took her unawares like that I found out how serious it was with her.”
“Serious?”