“She’s that way ever since,” said Thane, with an air of sharing his misery.
“Then you tell me,” said John.
“I carried her home,” said Thane, now weary of telling it, “from where she got hurt between me an’ the Cornishman knocking ourselves around in the path, an’ old Enoch he got a wicked notion as I don’t know what an’ sent for the preacher an’ we was married. Then he handed me the blue ticket an’ put us out of the house.”
John turned to Agnes with a question on his tongue. She anticipated him and began to sing:—
“What hap-pen-ed ...”
As he shuddered and turned away again she stopped.
“I was coming for my street clothes to where I live,” continued Thane, “being as I was all that time in my puddling rig an’ we got bogged here like you see us now. Nothing I say let’s do will move her. And when I say all right, what does she want, she chanties about me, making them up out of nothing.”
“When they get like that,” said John, “you have to use force. You’ve got to pick them up.”
“Can’t work it,” said Thane.
“Why not? Does she bite?”