The lawyer leaned back in his chair, and, hooking his leg over the arm, softly scratched the back of the appreciative old dog with dangling boot toe.
“Eli, here, has often remarked to me,” he said, squinting up at the cracked ceiling, the quizzical pucker still at his mouth corners, “that I let love as a special pleading overrule exceptions right along.
“I do really suppose I have done a master sight of malicious mischief in the world by marrying these young critters that are fighting the old folks and don’t dare to flee to the parsons, and haven’t a single, reasonable, sensible, business excuse for getting married, except that they’ve fallen in love themselves instead of waiting and letting the farms or the fishing schooners be introduced to each other by the old folks and fall in love. There’s nothing prettier in this world, ’Mad,’ than a hundred and twenty acre farm sighing with its corn tassels and a neighbouring farm rippling back an answer with its oat heads, and both of ’em getting so much in love with one another that it is only necessary for the young folks to get together and ratify the match and count the wedding presents.”
Old Amazeen snorted disgustedly. “There ain’t no more practicality to you, Squire, than there is to a June bug tryin’ to butt the moon. I tell ye, proputty has got to be considered first!”
The Squire still gazed meditatively at the ceiling through the tobacco smoke.
“’Mad’,” he said, in that half-jesting tone that many Palermo literalists characterised as ‘too free and easy for a lawyer,’ “you’ve loafed here a good deal and I’ve heard you comment on most of the Palermo vital statistics—births and deaths and marriages. Now here’s the difference between you and Eli, here. You say, ‘Huh! ’nother brat got along down to So-and-so’s, and only last week she was rapping out Hungryman’s ratty-too on the bottom of the flour-barrel with her rolling-pin, trying to dust down enough for another batch of biscuit!’ But Eli comes in, wags his tail and says to me: ‘Just came past So-and-so’s and their dog Gyp said to me that he’d slyed in a few minutes before and kissed the new baby on the cheek with the tip of his tongue. Said the new baby tickled right out into the funniest little snicker!’ Gyp said: ‘Old man, we’re all a little short just now, ’count of extra expenses and excitement and all that, you know, or I’d ask you to have dinner with me in honor of the occasion, but we’re going to pitch in again in dead earnest, and I’m going to run the dog churn over to the custom dairy, and, say! for one snicker a day from that baby I’ll trot my legs off.’”
“’Mad’, as you say it: ‘A couple more fools married before they had a shot in their locker.’ And Eli says: ‘I happened to drop in behind that young Davis couple in the narrow path, and though I wasn’t trying to listen to secrets, I did hear him say: “Little wife, you aren’t sorry you married a poor man, are you?”’”
“All that people want money for,” said she, “is to buy just such happiness as we possess now. And their money doesn’t buy it, after all. And we don’t have to say ‘mine’ and ‘your’ about our love. It’s all—ours—and that’s a blessed word.” And then she stood on tiptoe and pulled his head down—and if I hadn’t run up over the bank then I’d have deserved to have a tin can tied to my tail.’
“’Mad’, you say: ‘Well, old Brown has got done! I hear he wasn’t wuth much property—hain’t leavin’ much behind.’ And Eli comes in with head and tail down: ‘It’s the husband of that good, old Missus Brown that’s dead—the lady that has set out so many plates of grub for me. The plate wasn’t on the back porch this morning, but I sat there a little while and I heard some one inside talking low and he said: “There was never a man in this town who left so many friends when he died. And he left a memory that’s worth leaving—never a mean act nor a sneaking trick nor a gouge in a trade! Property? Oh, I don’t know. You never thought of that when you thought of him. I only know that he used wisely the good things he found on earth in his reach as he went along, without seeing how much he could keep away from his neighbours.”’”
Old man Amazeen rapped out his pipe ashes and looked at the Squire sullenly.