Yes, I know you said a man."

"Then why not a man?"

"Well, I don't know, only it seems to me that if I was as tired as you
look I wouldn't go to see no man's man."

"How about any woman's woman?"

"Well, that's different. You can put off seein' a man, and you might put
off seein' a woman, but you don't want to. But maybe you ain't as big a
chump about a woman as I am."

Milford said that the wisest man among wise men could easily be a fool
among women. Solomon's wisdom, diluted by woman, became a weak quality.
"Except once," he added, taking down his pipe from the clock shelf, "and
that was when he called for a sword to cut a child in two to divide it
between two mothers; but if the question had been between himself and a
woman, I don't know but he'd have got the worst of it."

It was the hired man's turn to clear away the dishes, and Milford sat
smoking in a muse. Night flies buzzed about the lamp, and the mosquito,
winged sting of the darkness, sang his sharp tune over the rain-water
barrel beneath the window. The hired man put away the dishes, and went
into his shell-like bedroom, a thin addition built against the house.
Milford heard him sit upon the edge of his bed, heard his heavy shoes
drop upon the floor, heard him stretch out upon the creaking slats to
lie a log till the peep of day. The tired laborer's pipe fell to the
floor. He got up with a straining shrug of his stiff shoulders, snatched
off his sticking garments, bathed in a tub, put on clean clothing, and
set out to keep his appointment. He muttered as he walked along the
road. He halted upon a knoll in the oat-field, and stood to breathe the
cool air from the low-lying meadow. As he drew near to the house, he
heard the shouts of children and the imploring tones of nurses and
mothers, begging them to go to bed. A lantern hanging under the eaves of
the veranda shed light upon women eager to hear gossip from the city
apartment house, and men, who, though breathing a fresh escape from
business, had already begun to inquire as to the running of the trains.
In the dooryard, a dull fire smoked in a tin pan,--a "smudge" to drive
off the mosquitoes. Some one flailed the piano. The Dutch girl, singing
a song of the lowlands, was grabbing clothes off a line, with no fear of
running over an old man. Mrs. Blakemore and George were sitting at a
corner of the veranda, apart from the general nest of gossipers. Bobbie
had been bribed to bed. The woman got up and g