“Sit down, Joe.”
“Guess I will,” said Joe. “Top rail of Hiram’s fence is mighty sharp.”
He sat down with caution, being heavy. In his own home the furniture was apt to go to pieces unless humored by a but gradual abandonment to it of the full weight of the human frame. Satisfied as to this, he began to use the weapon of his sex:
“You’re well fixed up here, Dory. There ain’t many women could keep a man’s house lookin’ like yourn!”
“Oh, it’s only just to not let things get ahead of you, and to keep your man p’inted right.”
“Might be the woman mostly,” he said. “Some women p’ints themselves, and some women don’t. It isn’t every woman’s got your talents.”
“I don’t know, Joe. Sometimes I think it isn’t worth while to go on and on this way, and then I let things go a while just any way they’re a-minded. That’s burying your talents, Joe; and then at last I can’t stand it, and I dig up my little talents, and dust them well, and say, ‘Get up on your legs, and attend to your business.’” Her parables were never clear to him.
“We live just like hogs at my house.”
“No, you don’t,” cried Dorothy, laughing. “I hate to hear a man taking away the characters of respectable animals. A hog has always got his nose over the trough. He wants his feed like everything. He’ll work for it all day—and smart! Why, he’ll be into your truck-patch and out, when he sees you, before you can turn round. He knows what he wants, and he goes for it; and he knows when he’s stealing as well as you or me. I hate to hear an animal called pig-headed because he don’t mean to be ordered here or there by a fellow that hasn’t got half his will or half his brains. There!”
“Gosh, Dory, but you’re a funny woman.”