I do not distinctly remember any bitter old man I have met in my travels. She was the third bitter old woman. Probably with the same general experiences as her husband, she had digested them differently. She was on the shelf, but made for efficiency and she was not run down.
In her youth her hair was probably red. Though she was plainly an old woman, it was the brown of middle age with only a few streaks of gray. Under her roughness there were touches of a truly cultured accent and manner. I would have said that in youth she had had what they call opportunities.
I asked: “Isn’t the moon fine to-night?”
She replied: “Why don’t you go to work?”
I answered: “I asked for work in the big city till I was worn to a thread. And you are the first person who has urged it on me since I took to tramping. I wonder why no one ever thought of it before.”
She smiled grudgingly.
“What kind of work did you try to do in the city?”
“I wanted to paint rainbows and gild sidewalks and blow bubbles for a living. But no one wanted me to. It is about all I am fit for.”
“Don’t talk nonsense to me, young man!”
“Pardon me, leddy—I am a writer of rhymes.”