r you to see what you had in
your pockets or ask what made your hair come out that funny way, till you
wished a couple she-bears would rush out and devour forty-two of 'em.

It was the first of quite many evenings when Homer and the lady would
set with a dish of apples and fried cakes between 'em and denounce
the world's posterity. The lady was even suffering grave doubts about
marriage. She said having to make her own way after she lost her husband
had made her relish her independence too much to think of ever giving it
up again lightly. Of course she wouldn't say that possibly at some time
in the dim future a congenial mate that thought as she did on vital
topics--and so forth--just enough to give Homer a feeling of security
that was wholly unwarranted. Wasn't he the heedless Hugo?

He was quite wordy about the lady to me when he come over on an errand
one day. He told me all about these delightful talks of theirs, and what
an attractive person she was, sound as a nut, and companionable and
good-looking without being one of these painted dolls. He said, to see
her above her sewing, she was a lovely view that he never tired of gazing
at, and to hear her loathe children was music to the ear. He said she
was a rare woman. I said she must be and asked him if he had committed
himself.

"Well, I don't say I have and I don't say I haven't," he says; "but here
I be, standing with reluctant feet at the parting of the ways. And who
knows what might happen? I know I've had some darned close shaves from
doing a whole lot worse in my time."

So I wished him the best of luck with this lady child hater; not that I
thought he'd really get what was coming to him. He was so crafty. He was
one of them that love not well but too wisely, as the saying is. Still,
there was a chance. He was scared to death of fire and yet he would keep
on playing with it. Some day the merry old flames might lick him up. I
hoped for the best.

A few days after that I went down to the foreman's house late in the
afternoon to see him about a shipment we had to make. Scott was off
somewhere, but his sister was in; so I set talking with her, and
waiting. This here Minna Humphrey was a hectic, blighted girl of thirty,
sandy-haired, green-eyed, and little--no bigger than a bar of soap after
a day's washing. What had blighted the poor thing was having to teach
public school for a dozen years. She'd been teaching down to Kulanche
that year and had just closed u