“Did you ever drink, Bob?”
“Me? You know I didn’t. I did get drunk once. The boys give me the wine. They say liquor makes a man savage, and makes him beat his wife. It didn’t take me that way. I was the happiest fellow you ever see. I felt light and free. My blood was warm, and just jumped along—and beat Ann? why, all the old love come back to me, as I went to’ards home, feelin’ big as a king. I made as how I’d go up to Ann and put arm aroun’ her neck in the old way, and tell her if she’d only encourage me a little, I’d get about for her and him and make ’em both rich. I couldn’t hardly wait to get home, I was so full of it. She was just settin’ down a pail of water when I come in. I made for her, gentle like, and had just got my arms to her neck, when she drawed back, with a few words like them this evening, and dosed the pail of water full in my face. As I scrambled out o’ the door, sorter blind like, I struck the edge o’ the gulley there, rolled down head over heels, and fotch up squar’ at the bottom, as sober a man as ever you see!”
I met Bob a few days after that in a state of effusive delight. He would not disclose himself at first. He followed me through several blocks, and at length, diving into an alley, beckoned me cautiously to him. He took off his old hat, always with him a preliminary to conversation, and glancing cautiously around, said in a hoarse whisper:
“Had a pic-nic to-day.”
“A pic-nic! Who?”
“Me and him!”
And his wrinkled, weather-beaten old face was broken by smiles and chuckles, that struggled to the surface, as porpoises do, and then shrunk back into the depths from whence they came.
“You don’t know Phenice—the neighbor’s gal as nusses him sometimes? Well, I seed her out with him, to-day, and I tolled her off kinder, till she got beyant the hill, and then I give her a quarter I had got, and purposed as how she should gi’ me a little time with him. She sciddled off to town to git her quarter spent, and I took him and made for the woods, to meet her thar agin, by sun!”
“He’s a deep one, I tell you!” he said, drawing a breath of admiration; “as deep a one as I ever see. He’d never been in the woods before, but he jest knowed it all! You orter seed him when a jay-bird come and sot on a high limb, and flung him some sass, and tried to sorter to make free with him. The look that boy give him couldn’t a’ been beat by nobody. The jay tried to hold up to it and chaffered a little, but he finally had to skip, the wust beat bird you ever saw!”