“It's a peaceful spot here,” she suggested. “Everybody seems to be contented.”
“Contentment—in a rut—that may be the best way of passing this life, after all.”
“But if you were in the rut, Captain Mayo, you might find that contentment would not agree to come and live with you.”
“Probably it wouldn't! I'd have to be born to the life here like this chap who is coming up the hill. You can see that he isn't worrying about himself or the world outside.”
The man was clumping slowly along in his rubber boots; an old cap was slewed awry on his head, its peak drawn down over one ear. He cocked up the other ear at sound of voices on the porch and loafed up and sat down on the edge of the boarding. Captain Mayo and the girl, accustomed to bland indifference to formality in rural neighborhoods, accepted this interruption without surprise or protest.
“'Tain't a bad night as nights go,” stated the caller.
“It's a beautiful night,” said Polly Candage.
“I reckon it seems so to you, after what you went through. I've been harking to your father telling the yarn down to the store.”
They did not reply, having their own ideas as to Captain Candage's loquacity.
The caller hauled a plug of tobacco from his pocket, gnawed off a chew, and began slow wagging of his jaws. “This world is full of trouble,” he observed,