want to see him like you. I never worry
about you, Billy."

It pleased me to have her say that. I know a lot of men who wouldn't
believe their wives loved them unless they fretted about them all the
time. I think a good many fellows even make up things just to see the
women worry. I remember that Stevens always used to come home either
with a sick headache or a tale of how he thought he might lose his job
or something of the sort and poor Dolly Stevens would stay awake half
the night comforting him. She'd tell Ruth about it the next day. I may
have had a touch of that disease myself before I came down here but I
know that ever since then I've tried to lift the worrying load off the
wife's shoulders. I've done my best to make Ruth feel I'm strong
enough to take care of myself. I've wanted her to trust me so that
she'd know I act always just as though she was by my side. Of course
I've never been able to do away altogether with her fear of sickness
and sudden death, but so far as my own conduct is concerned I've
tried to make her feel secure in me.

When I stop to think about it, Ruth has really lived three lives. She
has lived her own and she has lived it hard. She not only has done her
daily tasks as well as she knew how but she has tried to make herself
a little better every day. That has been a waste of time because she
was just naturally as good as they make them but you couldn't ever
make her see that. I don't suppose there's been a day when at night
she hasn't thought she might have done something a little better and
lain awake to tell me so.

Then Ruth has lived my life and done over again every single thing
I've done except the actual physical labor. Why every evening when I
came back from work she wanted me to begin with seven-thirty A.M. and
tell her everything that happened after that. And when I came back
from school at night, she'd wake up out of a sound sleep if she had
gone to bed and ask me to tell her just what I'd learned. Though she
never held a trowel in her hand I'll bet she could go out to-day and
build a true brick wall. And though she has never seen half the men
I've met, she knows them as well as I do myself. Some of them she
knows better and has proved to me time and again that she does. I've
often told her about some man I'd just met and about whom I was
enthusiastic for the moment and she'd say:

"Tell me what he looks like, Billy."

I'd tell her and then she'd ask about his eyes and abo