the first two
fingers and thumb of his left hand, while with his right he had been
making abstracted cuts at the thistles and other eligible marks along
the roadside.

"Wa'al," he said at last, "we was married, an' our wheels tracked putty
well fer quite a consid'able spell. I got to thinkin' more of her all
the time, an' she me, seemin'ly. We took a few days off together two
three times that summer, to Niag'ry, an' Saratogy, an' 'round, an' had
real good times. I got to thinkin' that the state of matrimony was a
putty good institution. When it come along fall, I was doin' well enough
so 't she could give up bus'nis, an' I hired a house an' we set up
housekeepin'. It was really more on my account than her'n, fer I got to
kind o' feelin' that when the meat was tough or the pie wa'n't done on
the bottom that I was 'sociated with it, an' gen'ally I wanted a place
of my own. But," he added, "I guess it was a mistake, fur 's she was
concerned."

"Why?" said John, feeling that some show of interest was incumbent.

"I reckon," said David, "'t she kind o' missed the comp'ny an' the talk
at table, an' the goin's on gen'ally, an' mebbe the work of runnin' the
place--she was a great worker--an' it got to be some diff'rent, I
s'pose, after a spell, settin' down to three meals a day with jest only
me 'stid of a tableful, to say nothin' of the evenin's. I was glad
enough to have a place of my own, but at the same time I hadn't ben used
to settin' 'round with nothin' pertic'ler to do or say, with somebody
else that hadn't neither, an' I wa'n't then nor ain't now, fer that
matter, any great hand fer readin'. Then, too, we'd moved into a
diff'rent part o' the town where my wife wa'n't acquainted. Wa'al,
anyway, fust things begun to drag some--she begun to have spells of not
speakin', an' then she begun to git notions about me. Once in a while
I'd have to go down town on some bus'nis in the evenin'. She didn't seem
to mind it at fust, but bom-by she got it into her head that the' wa'n't
so much bus'nis goin' on as I made out, an' though along that time she'd
set sometimes mebbe the hull evenin' without sayin' anythin' more 'n yes
or no, an' putty often not that, yet if I went out there'd be a
flare-up; an' as things went on the'd be spells fer a fortni't together
when I couldn't any time of day git a word out of her hardly, unless it
was to go fer me 'bout somethin' that mebbe I'd done an' mebbe I
hadn't--it didn't make no diff'rence.