at that. Welborne told her
he was givin' her the pick of the whole thing because she was startin'
the ball rollin', an' her fine marble would set the place off. She
selected twenty foot square under a weepin'-willow, which he said had a
rock bottom and the best view of the town. It only set her back two
hundred round plugs, but she had that much left in the bank, and seems
powerful well, satisfied. I wouldn't 'a' fetched all this up, but I
'lowed you'd like to know what a big thing growed out of yore little
joke that day. I love a good joke myself, but when one's turned on you
in a sort o' wholesale way, it don't feel the best in the world."

"There is no joke about it; it's outright stealing!" Henley had
reference to Welborne's part of the transaction. "Any man can get money
out of fool women, if he's mean enough to take advantage of their silly
whims."

"I often wonder about you an' me an' the whole bunch of us here at the
house," Wrinkle said. "Not one of the four is blood kin to the other,
and yet here we are all wedged together as tight as young catbirds in a
nest. Folks say the hardest question on earth is how to live, and yet to
me it's been as easy as fallin' off a log into soft sand. Me 'n Jane
never counted on Dick for any sort of aid, an' yet it was through him
that we are provided for--in fact, he was so wishy-washy and helpless
that we was glad to have him tie up with a woman that had a few dollars.
He went in for a high old time, and he had it. I couldn't object--I was
that way myself. He was as bad after gals as a drummer, and in his
sparkin' days, as maybe you know, he could have had his pick. I couldn't
keep from hearin' you an' Hettie talkin' in the passage jest now, and
when she come into the light mad enough to bite a tenpenny nail in two I
saw thar had been a row. Her notion to have you on hand at sech a time
as that may seem odd, but women are all odd. They want what other women
can't have, and I reckon Het thinks it would be a sort o' feather in
'er cap to mourn in public over one husband while she's leanin' agin
another that is ready an' willin' in every way."

"I reckon we've talked long enough about it," Henley said, frigidly, and
he glanced toward the lights in the farm-house.

"Yes, I reckon so," returned the gadfly. "As for me, I never was able to
see how Het could accuse you of bein' jealous of Dick, when--"

"Jealous fiddlesticks!" Henley snorted. "I never was jealous of a _live_
man