"Mr. Insley and I sat down by the fire. I remember I looked over towards him and felt sort of nervous, he was so good looking and so silent. A good-looking talking man I ain't afraid of, because I can either admire or despise him immediate, and either way it gives me something to do answering back. But one that's still, it takes longer to make out, and it don't give you no occupation for your impressions. And Insley, besides being still, was so good looking that it surprised me every new time I see him. I always wanted to say: Have you been looking like that all the time since I last saw you, and how do you keep it up?
"He had a face and a body that showed a good many men looking out of 'em at you, and all of 'em was men you'd like to of known. There was scholars that understood a lot, and gentlemen that acted easy, and outdoor men that had pioneered through hard things and had took their joy of the open. All of them had worked hard at him—and had give him his strength and his merriness and his big, broad shoulders and his nice, friendly boyishness, and his eyes that could see considerably more than was set before them. By his own care he had knit his body close to life, and I know he had knit his spirit close to it, too. As I looked over at him that night, my being nervous sort of swelled up into a lump in my throat and I wanted to say inside me: O God, ain't it nice, ain't it nice that you've got some folks like him?
"He glanced over to me, kind of whimsical.
"'Are you in favour of folks or tombstones?' he asks, with his eyebrows flickering up.
"'Me?' I says. 'Well, I don't want to be clannish, but I do lean a good deal towards folks.'
"'You knew what I meant to-night?' he says.
"'Yes,' I answered, 'I knew.'
"'I thought you did,' he says grave.
"Then he lapsed into keeping still again and so did I, me through not quite knowing what to say, and him—well, I wasn't sure, but I thought he acted a good deal as if he had something nice to think about. I've seen that look on people's faces sometimes, and it always makes me feel a little surer that I'm a human being. I wondered if it was his new work he was turning over, or his liking the child's being cared for, or the mere nice minute, there by the grate fire. Then a door upstairs shut, and somebody come down and into the room, and when he got up, his look sort of centred in that new minute.
"It was Miss Sidney that come in, and she set down by the fire like something pleased her.