"Perhaps you ain't quite sure of the lady's age."
"That's it, I ain't."
"I always thought that you'd get married sometime, Sam."
Sam had been joked so often about matrimony that it seldom annoyed him, and now that his inquisitor was wholly on the wrong scent he was greatly amused.
"Well," he replied, "most men do marry sooner or later."
"And in your case it's a good deal later," chuckled Mr. Wiggins.
"Yes; but you see I've seen so many blamed fools get married 'fore they'd cut all their second teeth I've kinder hung off," Sam retorted.
"Miss Sawyer's a nice kind of woman," ventured Mr. Wiggins, as he coughed, and looked at a picture on the wall. The grin on Sam's face disappeared.
"Who said anything about her?" he demanded, indignantly.
"I said that she was a nice kind of a woman. No harm in that, is there?" Mr. Wiggins mildly asked, as he turned his weak little eyes on Sam, who did not dare to meet them with his own.