“Say, Dave, thet’s as near to tellin’ a lie as I ever knowed you to come. Do you reckon I’d spile your trip and Swickey’s trip by ridin’ on them trains and hangin’ around hotels in store-clothes and feelin’ mis’rable?”
“But we want you—Swickey says she won’t go unless you come.”
“No,” replied the old man. “Swickey thinks she wants me and she says she won’t go ’less I come, hey?” He chuckled at David’s seriousness. “My whiskers ain’t gray jest because I like ’em thet way. I was young onct—and mebby you mought figure out thet Swickey had a ma onct, likewise.”
“Of course—I know that, but—”
“And seein’ as I’m givin’ you my gal,—howcome I reckon she’s guv herself on the resk I’d say ‘yes,’—you jest let me enj’y it my way, and stay to home. When you thinkin’ of leavin’?” he asked, after a pause.
“We haven’t just decided on the day, but we should like to go some time this month. It’s May—”
“Uhuh, it’s May ... May,” he muttered. “Think you kin leave Swickey up at the house fur a spell? I got suthin’ to say ’bout her ma, and I ain’t never felt like sayin’ it to you afore this.”
David came and sat on the log beside him.
“It’s kind of good,” said Avery, “to empty out a feller’s insides,—meanin’ the place where he keeps storin’ up feelin’s ’bout what are done and can’t be did over ag’in,—and take a fresh start so’st he kin fill up ag’in ’thout crowdin’. ’Long about this time of year when growin’ things is takin’ a new holt on the ground, birds singin’ and flies and skeeters jest commencin’ to feel their oats, I allus come up here and gits some of these”—pointing to the trilliums he had gathered—“fur a friend. I allus gits white uns, howcome the red uns is purty.” And he took a single stalk and turned it round and round meditatively.
“When I was consid’able older than you be, I was called ‘Bud.’ ‘Bud Avery,’ they called me. Hosses was my failin’ and my luck. Nex’ to a good woman, I reckon a hoss is ’bout the best thing they is. I was a purty frisky young blue-jay them days, goin’ to all the raisin-bees, dancin’, trappin’ at times, drinkin’ licker, fightin’ and bein’ fit. The feller what got this here eye, he never tole no pusson ’bout it, so no pusson knows, aside of him, jest how it come to not be thar. He were a French-Canady man. He come over the line—in a hurry, too, I reckon—and brung his sister along. He built a cabin on the p’int at the head of the lake, near where I was livin’ then, and went into the woods workin’ fur the Great Western, what was cuttin’ timber them days. I was haulin’ fur the Comp’ny at the time and he was workin’ with the crew swampin’ out roads. He never said much to no one and some said he had a good reason fur keepin’ still. And he had. Seems he knifed a breed over in Canady, fur gettin’ sassy to his sister when he had licker in him. No, the breed—Jules—warn’t the drinkin’ sort. Jules Marbeau was his name. Anyhow, he had to light out, and he brung his sister along. She stuck to him, seein’ as the row was about her. She reckoned to keep him stiddy; howcome the knifin’ business warn’t none of her fault. Her name was Nanette.”