“And considerin’ that he died of consumption, he had a right to fall away,” said Asaph. “If what you are drivin’ at, Thomas, is that Marietta isn’t a good housekeeper and hasn’t the right sort of notions of feedin’, look at me. I’ve lived with Marietta just about a year, and in that time I have gained forty-two pounds. Now, of course, I ain’t unreasonable, and don’t mean to say that you would gain forty-two pounds in a year, ‘cause you ain’t got the frame and bone to put it on; but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if you was to gain twenty, or even twenty-five, pounds in eighteen months, anyway; and more than that you ought not to ask, Thomas, considerin’ your height and general build.”
“Isn’t Marietta Himes a good deal of a freethinker?” asked Thomas.
“A what?” cried Asaph. “You mean an infidel?”
“No,” said Thomas, “I don’t charge nobody with nothin’ more than there’s reason for; but they do say that she goes sometimes to one church and sometimes to another, and that if there was a Catholic church in this village she would go to that. And who’s goin’ to say where a woman will turn up when she don’t know her own mind better than that?”
Asaph colored a little. “The place where Marietta will turn up,” said he, warmly, “is on a front seat in the kingdom of heaven; and if the people that talk about her will mend their ways, they’ll see that I am right. You need not trouble yourself about that, Thomas. Marietta Himes is pious to the heel.”
Mr. Rooper now shifted himself a little on the bench and crossed one leg over the other. “Now look here, Asaph,” he said, with a little more animation than he had yet shown, “supposin’ all you say is true, have you got any reason to think that Mrs. Himes ain’t satisfied with things as they are?”
“Yes, I have,” said Asaph. “And I don’t mind tellin’ you that the thing she’s least satisfied with is me. She wants a man in the house; that is nateral. She wouldn’t be Marietta Himes if she didn’t. When I come to live with her I thought the whole business was settled; but it isn’t. I don’t suit her. I don’t say she’s lookin’ for another man, but if another man was to come along, and if he was the right kind of a man, it’s my opinion she’s ready for him. I wouldn’t say this to everybody, but I say it to you, Thomas Rooper, ‘cause I know what kind of a man you are.”
Mr. Rooper did not return the compliment. “I don’t wonder your sister ain’t satisfied with you,” he said, “for you go ahead of all the lazy men I ever saw yet. They was sayin’ down at the tavern yesterday—only yesterday—that you could do less work in more time than anybody they ever saw before.”
“There’s two ways of workin’,” said Asaph. “Some people work with their hands and some with their heads.”
Thomas grimly smiled. “It strikes me,” said he, “that the most head-work you do is with your jaws.”