“You were quite right, captain,” Floyd returned. “Pole would have made me appear ridiculous.”
“Huh! I'd a got more out o' the old fossil than Captain Duncan did,” Pole declared, positively, “You knowed how to manage men in the war, captain, an' you are purty good at bossin' an overseer when you are at a hotel in Florida an' he's fillin' a sack in yore corn-crib at home, but I'll bet my hat you didn't tackle that feller right. Knowing that he was down in the mouth, unlucky, an' generally soured agin the world, I'd never a-tried to git 'im interested in pore kin he'd never seed. I'll bet a quart o' rye to two fingers o' spilt cider that he'd 'a' talked out o' t'other side o' his mouth ef I'd a been thar to sorter show 'im the kind o' kin that he mought scrape up ef he turned his hand to it. You let me run agin that old skunk, an' I'll have him settin' up the drinks an' axin' me more questions than a Dutchman l'arnin' to talk our language. Shucks! I'm jest a mountain-scrub, but I know human natur'. Thar comes old Mayhew. He'll order us out—it's treat, trade, or travel with that old skunk.”
XIII
HILLHOUSE had gone over to Porter's early that morning. He found Nathan seated on the porch in his shirt-sleeves, his heavy shoes unlaced for comfort and a hand-made cob-pipe in his mouth. “I want to see Miss Cynthia a moment,” the preacher said, with a touch of embarrassment as he came in at the gate, his hat in hand.
Old Porter rose with evident reluctance. “All right,” he said. “I'll see ef I kin find 'er—ef I do it will be the fust time I ever run across her, or any other woman, when she was needed.”
He returned in a moment “She'll be out in a few minutes,” he said. “She told me to tell you to set down here on the porch.”
Hillhouse took a vacant seat, holding his hat daintily on his sharp knees, and Porter resumed his chair, tilting it backward as he talked.
“Ef you are ever unlucky enough to git married, parson,” he said, “you'll know more about women than you do now, an' at the same time you'll swear you know less. They say the Maker of us all has unlimited knowledge, but I'll be blamed ef I believe He could understand women—even ef he did create 'em. I'm done with the whole lot!” Porter waved his hand, as if brushing aside something of an objectionable nature. “They never do a thing that has common-sense in it. I believe they are plumb crazy when it comes to tacklin' anything reasonable. I'll give you a sample. Fer the last ten years I have noticed round about here, that whenever a man died the women folks he left sent straight to town an' bought a high-priced coffin to lay 'im away in. No matter whether the skunk had left a dollar to his name or not, that Jew undertaker over thar at Darley, to satisfy family pride, sent out a coffin an' trimmin's to the amount of an even hundred dollars. I've knowed widows an' orphans to stint an' starve an' go half naked fer ten years to pay off a debt like that. Now, as I'm financially shaped, I won't leave but powerful little, an' that one thing worried me considerable. Now an' then I'd sorter spring the subject on my women, an' I found out that they thought a big splurge like that was the only decent way to act over a man's remains. Think o' the plumb foolishness, parson, o' layin' a man away on a silk-plush cushion after he's dead, when he's slept all his life on a common tick stuffed with corn-shucks with the stubs on 'em. But that's women! Well, I set to work to try to beat 'em at the game, as fur as I was concerned. I 'lowed ef I made my preparations myself ahead o' time, with the clear understandin' that I wanted it that away, why, that no reasonable person would, or could, raise objections.”