"Well, I reckon, Jane, old girl," he laughed, as he wiped a trickling stream of tobacco-juice from the corner of his sagging mouth, "that you are the very last human being I ever expected to lay eyes on again. I swear I wouldn't 'a' known you from Adam's cat if Nettie hadn't told me who it was. My, how thin you look, and all bent over!"
"Yes, I'm changed, and you are too, Joe," she said, as, with a stiff hand beneath her, she sought the chair again.
"Yes"—he went to the doorway and spat voluminously out into the yard, and came back swinging a chair as lightly in his hand as if it had been a baseball bat with which he was playing—"yes, I reckon I am altered considerable; a body's more apt to see changes in others than in himself. I was just thinking the other day about them old times. La me! how much fun we all did have, but it didn't last—it didn't last."
He sat down, leaning forward and clasping his dry-palmed hands with a sound like the rubbing together of two pieces of paper. There was an awkward silence. Nettie Lawson came to the door and glanced in inquiringly, and then went away. They heard her calling her chickens some distance from the cabin.
"No, I wouldn't have recognized you if I'd met you alone in the big road," he said, "nor you wouldn't me, I reckon."
"Joe"—she was looking about the room—"somehow I had an idea that you were in—in a little better circumstances than—than you seem to be in now."
"Well, that wouldn't be hard to imagine, anyway," he said, with an intonation like a sigh, if it wasn't one. "If a body couldn't imagine a better fix for a man to be in than I am in, they'd better quit. Lord, Lord, I reckon I ought to be dead ashamed to meet you in this condition when you knew me away back in them palmy days, but, Jane, I really believe I've sunk below that sort of a feeling. You know I used to cut a wide swath when I had plenty of money and friends, but what's the use of crying over spilt milk? This is all there is left of me. I managed to marry Nettie off to a feller good enough in his way. I thought he was a fine catch, but I don't know. I was under the impression that his folks had some money to give him to sorter start the two out, but it seems they didn't have, and was looking for a stake themselves. Since they married he just stays round here, contented and about as shiftless as anybody could be. I thought, for instance, that he never got in debt, but a store-keeper in town told me the other day that he owed him for the very duds he was married in."
"That's bad, that's powerful bad," Jane said, sympathetically. Then a fixed look took possession of her eyes, and her fingers tightened on her bonnet in her lap, as she plunged towards the thing with which she was burdened. "Joe," she continued, "I've come all the way over the mountain in my delicate health to see you about a particular matter. God knows it's the hardest thing I ever contemplated, but there is no other way out of it."
"Well, I think I know what you are going to say," he answered, avoiding her eyes.
"You do, Joe?" she exclaimed. "Oh no, surely, you can't know that."