"P. S. Nobody has been able to tell from word or look of mine that I have ever been surprised at a single thing I have heard or seen. You may be quite sure of that."
"I bet you!" cried Willock admiringly. "NOW, what do you think of it?"
"She won't be there long," remarked Bill, waving his arm, "till she finds out what I learned long ago—that there's nothing to it. If you want to cultivate a liking for a dugout, just live a while in the open."
"I don't know as to that," Willock said. "I sorter doubts if Lahoma will ever care for dugouts again, except as she stays on the outside of 'em, and gets to romancing. A mouthful of real ice-cream spoils your taste everlasting for frozen starch and raw eggs."
"Lahoma is a real person," declared Bill, "and a dugout is grounded and bedded in a real thing—this very solid and very real old earth, if you ask to know what I mean."
"Lord, I knows what you mean," retorted Willock. "You've lived in a hole in the ground most of your life, and are pretty near ripe to be laid away in another one, smaller I grant you, but dark and deep, according. We'll never get Lahoma back the same as when we let her flutter forth hunting a green twig over the face of the waters. She may bring back the first few leaves she finds, but a time's going to come...." He broke off abruptly, his eyes wide and troubled, as if already viewing the dismal prospect.
"Maybe I AM old," Bill grudgingly conceded, "but I don't set up to be no Noah's ark."
"Oh," cried Willock, his sudden sense of future loss causing him to speak with unwonted irony, "maybe you're just a Shem, or Ham or that other kind of Fat— What's the matter, Wilfred? Can't you let go of that letter?"
"I've made out the name of that widower who's paying court to my old sweetheart," he said, "but it's one I never heard of before; that's why it looked so strange—it's Gledware."
Willock uttered a sharp exclamation. "Let me see it." He started up abruptly, and bent over the page.