There was an anxious look in her one eye as she accepted his invitation to sit down in the firelight.
"I wanted to see you private 'bout Lukins," she began. "There's them that calls him Bony Lukins but I reckon he ain't no bonier than the everidge run o' men—not a bit—an' if he was I don't reckon his bones orto be throwed at him every time he's spoke to that away."
Peter Lukins was a slim, sober faced, quiet little man with a long nose who worked in the carding mill. He never spoke, save when spoken to, and then with a solemn look as if the matter in hand, however slight, were likely to affect his eternal welfare. In his cups he was speechless and, in a way, dumb with merriment. He answered no questions, he expressed no opinions, he told no stories. He only smiled and broke into roars of laughter, even if there was no one to share his joy, as if convinced, at last, of the hopeless absurdity of life. Some one told of following him from Springfield to New Salem and of hearing him laugh all the way. Many had noted another peculiarity in the man. He seemed always to have a week's growth of beard on his face.
"What can I do about it?" Abe asked.
"I've been hopin' an' wishin' some kind of a decent handle could be put on to his name," said Mrs. Lukins, with her eye upon a knot hole in the counter. "Something with a good sound to it. You said that anything you could do for the New Salem folks you was goin' to do an' I thought maybe you could fix it."
Abe smiled and asked: "Do you want a title?"
"If it ain't plum owdacious I wisht he could be made a Colonel."
"That's a title for fighting men," said Abe.
"An' that man has fit for his life ever since he was born," said Mrs. Lukins. "He's fit the measles an' the smallpox an' the fever an' ager an' conquered 'em."
"I reckon he deserves the title," Abe remarked.