The Widow smiled in pity as she said this to Washee-Washee. The Chinaman
understood the first proposition perfectly, but not the last at all. To
him all this was simply a bad investment. To him it was only a little
shipwreck; and having been taught by the philosophers of his country to
prepare for adversity in the hour of prosperity, he was not at all
lacking in resignation now. He rose up, smiled that patient and peaceful
smile of his, and wended his way to his home.

Sandy looked a moment at the retreating hungry-looking little Chinaman,
and then thrust his two great hands into his two great pockets, and
tilting his head, first on the left shoulder and then on the right,
tried hard to look the Widow in the face, but found himself
contemplating the toes of his great gum boots.

"Will you not come in?"

The man rolled forward. He sat down in the Widow's cabin in a perfect
glow of excitement and delight.

I am bound to admit that, upright and great as Sandy was, he kept
thinking to himself, "What will the Judge and the boys say of this?" He
even was glad in his heart that Limber Tim stood with his back glued up
against the palings on the outside, and his hands reached back and wound
in and around the rails, so that he could testify to the boys, tell it,
in fact, to the world, that he had entered in, and sat down in the
Widow's cabin.

It was not easy work for Sandy sitting there. He soon began to suffer.
He hitched about and twisted around on the broad wooden stool as if he
had sat down on a very hot stove.

The Widow sat a little way back across the cabin, a bit of work in her
lap, looking up at Sandy now, and now dropping her half-sad blue eyes
down to her work, and all the time, in a low sweet way, doing every word
of the talking.

Sandy's hot stove kept getting hotter and hotter. He began to wish he
was down with the boys at the Howling Wilderness, consulting the oracle
of cocktails. All at once he seemed to discover his great long legs.
They seemed to him as if they reached almost clean across the cabin,
like two great anacondas going to swallow up the Widow. He fished them
up, curved them, threw his two great hands across them, nursed them
affectionately, but they seemed more in the way and uglier than ever
before. Then he thrust them out again, but jerked them back instantly,
and drove them back under his bench as if they had been two big and
unruly bull-dogs, and he nearly upset himself in doing it. They