"But they're very nice; they're lovely; and I've just been complimenting her. Now what has this woman done to you?"
It seemed impossible that a man of Blaze Jones's character could actually harbor crude superstitions, and yet there was no mistaking his earnestness when he said:
"I ain't sure whether she's to blame, or her husband, but misfortune has folded me to herself."
"How?"
"Well, I'm sick."
"You don't look it."
"I don't exactly feel it, either, but I am. I don't sleep good, my heart's actin' up, I've got rheumatism, my stomach feels like I'd swallowed something alive—"
"You're smoking too much," Alaire affirmed, with conviction.
But skepticism aroused Blaze's indignation. With elaborate sarcasm he retorted: "I reckon that's why my best team of mules run away and dragged me through a ten-acre patch of grass burrs—on my belly, eh? It's a wonder I wasn't killed. I reckon I smoked so much that I give a tobacco heart to the best three-year-old bull in my pasture! Well, I smoked him to death, all right. Probably it was nicotine poisonin' that killed twenty acres of my cotton, too; and maybe if I'd cut out Bull Durham I'd have floated that bond issue on the irrigation ditch. But I was wedded to cigarettes, so my banks are closin' down on me. Sure! That's what a man gets for smokin'."
"And do you attribute all these misfortunes to Paloma's dressmaker?"