"You can watch out," I says, "now that you know. Folks get careless about their near and dear—that's all. They don't notice that anything's the matter till it's too late."
"Oh, dear!" she says. "Oh, if anything should happen to Harry, why, Miss Marsh—"
"Exactly," says I.
We talked on a little while till I heard what I was waiting for—him coming up the street. I noticed that he hadn't been gone downtown long enough to buy a match.
"I'm going over to Miss Matey's for some pie-plant," I says. "Her second crop is on. Can I go through your back gate? Maybe I'll come back this way."
When I went around their house I saw that she was still standing on the porch and he was coming in the gate. And I never looked back at all—bad as I wanted to.
It was deep dusk when I came back. The air was as gentle as somebody that likes you when they're liking you most.
When I came by the end of the porch I heard voices, so I knew that they were talking. And then I caught just one sentence. You'd think I could have been contented to slip through the front yard and leave them to work it out. But I wasn't. In fact I'd only just got the stage set ready for what I meant to do.
I walked up the steps and laid my pie-plant on the stoop.
"I'm coming in," I says.