"Yes, you bet! And there's a good many things you don't want repeated. You don't want it repeated that you put old Lewson's brats up to turning him out of the house."
"Look here, madam, I didn't do anything of the sort. I simply said I didn't see how they could live with him; and I didn't, either."
"Well, it's all right. The old man's got a better home than he ever had; and you needn't worry yourself about my man over yonder. He couldn't sell as much milk from five cows as you can do, and I don't believe you can keep it up unless we have rain pretty soon, but he knows how to attend to his own business, and that's somethin' you've never been able to learn."
"Madam, if you'll step from in front of my horses I'll drive on."
"Yes, and mighty glad of the opportunity. You stir trouble, and are the first one to hitch up and drive out of it. Now go on, and don't you let me hear of any more murder stories."
Mrs. Blakemore, mother of the red boy, would not presume to say that there was a stain on Milford's character; but he was undoubtedly peculiar, with an air which bespoke a constant effort to hide something. She knew, however, that there was good blood somewhere in his family. She believed in blood. Her husband had failed in business, and she could afford to despise trade. One Sunday, with her vacant-eyed husband and her red tormentor, she halted at Milford's cottage. He was sitting on the veranda, with the billows of a Sunday newspaper about him on the floor. She introduced her husband, who nodded. She spoke of the fervor of the day and the ragged cloud-skirts flaunting in the sky. She thought it must be going to rain. In the city a rain was wasted, a sloppy distress; but in the country it was a beautiful and refreshing necessity. In each great drop there was a stanza of sentiment.
Milford's eyes twinkled. "You ought to go to a mining-camp," he said. "Men who couldn't parse would call you a poem."
She turned to her husband. "George, do you hear that? Isn't that sweet? So unaffected, too." George grunted; he was thinking of the receiver that had had charge of his affairs. His wife continued, speaking to Milford: "In my almost hothouse refinement, I have longed to see the rude chivalry of the West—where a rhythm of true gallantry beats beneath a woolen shirt."
"Yes," said Milford, "and beneath a linen shirt, too. The West is just as wide but not so woolen as it was."
"Oh, what quaint conceits! George, do you hear them? George, dear."