ize and my importance.

"I was a little chap at the time, Mrs. Cudlip," I returned.

"An' it's been twenty, I reckon," she pursued reminiscently, "sence yo'
pa was took. Wall, wall, time does fly when you come to think of deaths,
now, doesn't it? I al'ays said thar wa'nt nothin' so calculated to put
cheer an' spirit into you as jest to remember the people who've dropped
off an' died while you've been spared. You didn't see much of yo' pa
durin' his last days, did you?"

"Never after I ran away, and that was the night he brought his second
wife home."

"He had a hard time toward the end, but I reckon she had a harder. It
wa'nt that he was a bad man at bottom, but he was soft-natured an' easy,
an' what he needed was to be helt an' to be helt steady. Some men air
like that--they can't stand alone a minute without beginnin' to wobble.
Now as long as yo' ma lived, she kept a tight hand on yo' pa, an' he
stayed straight; but jest as soon as he was left alone, he began to
wobble, an' from wobblin' he took to the bottle, and from the bottle he
took to that brass-headed huzzy he married. She was the death of him,
Benjy; I ought to know, for I lived next do' to 'em to the day of his
burial. As to that, anyway, ma'am," she added to Sally, "my humble
opinion is that women have killed mo' men anyway than they've ever
brought into the world. It's a po' thought, I've al'ays said, in which
you can't find some comfort."

"You were very kind to him, I have heard," I observed, as she paused for
breath and turned toward me.

"It wa'nt mo'n my duty if I was, Benjy, for yo' ma was a real good
neighbour to me, an' many's the plate of buttered muffins you've brought
to my do' when you wa'nt any higher than that."

It was true, I admitted the fact as gracefully as I could.

"My mother thought a great deal of you," I remarked.

"You don't see many of her like now," she returned with a sigh, "the
mo's the pity. 'Thar ain't room for two in marriage,' she used to say,
'one of 'em has got to git an' I'd rather 'twould be the other!' 'Twa'nt
that way with the palaverin' yaller-headed piece that yo' pa married
arterwards. She'd a sharp enough tongue, but a tongue don't do you much
good with a man unless he knows you've got the backbone behind to drive
it. It ain't the tongue, but the backbone that counts in marriage. At
first he was mighty soft, but befo' two weeks was up he'd begun to beat
her, an' I ain't got a particle of respect for a wo