'twas
done, and Emeline's husband--his name was Abner--thought the world and
all of him. 'Fore he died he made Emeline promise to always be kind to
Bennie D., and she said she would. Abner left him a little money, and he
spent it travelin' 'for his health.' I don't know where he traveled
to, but, wherever 'twas, the health must have been there. He was the
healthiest critter ever I see--and the laziest.

"Well, his travels bein' over, down he comes to make his sister-in-law
a little visit. And he stays on and stays on. He never took no shine
to me--I judge he figgered I hadn't no business sharin' Abner's
property--and I never took to him, much.

"Emeline noticed Bennie D. and me wa'n't fallin' on each other's necks
any to speak of, and it troubled her. She blamed me for it. Said Bennie
was a genius, and geniuses had sensitive natures and had to be treated
with consideration and different from other folks. And that promise to
Abner weighed on her conscience, I cal'late. Anyhow, she petted that
blame inventor, and it made me mad. And yet I didn't say much--not so
much as I'd ought to, I guess. And Bennie D. was always heavin' out
little side remarks about Emeline's bein' fitted for better things than
she was gettin', and how, when his invention was 'perfected,' HE'D see
that she didn't slave herself to death, and so on and so on. And he had
consider'ble to say about folks tryin' to farm when they didn't know
a cucumber from a watermelon, and how 'farmin'' was a good excuse for
doin' nothin', and such. And I didn't have any good answer to that,
'cause I do know more about seaweed than I do cucumbers, and the farm
wasn't payin' and I knew it.

"If he'd said these things right out plain, I guess likely I'd have give
him what he deserved. But he didn't; he just hinted and smiled and acted
superior and pityin'. And if I got mad and hove out a little sailor talk
by accident, he'd look as sorry and shocked as the Come-Outer parson
does when there's a baby born to a Universalist family. He'd get up
and shut the door, as if he was scart the neighbors' morals would
suffer--though the only neighbor within hearin' was an old critter that
used to run a billiard saloon in Gloucester, and HIS morals had been
put out of their misery forty years afore--and he'd suggest that Emeline
better leave the room, maybe. And then I'd feel ashamed and wouldn't
know what to do, and 'twould end, more'n likely, by my leavin' it
myself.

"You can s