n't you? Well, if you don't then I'm just talkin' silly, that's all.
If you do, I . . . . Humph! I might have known it!"

She turned like a shot and jerked the door open. There was a rattle, a
series of thumps, and a crash. Lute was sprawling upon the floor at
our feet. I gazed at him in open-mouthed astonishment. Dorinda sniffed
scornfully.

"I might have known it," she repeated. "Sittin' on the stairs there,
listenin', wan't you?"

Lute raised himself to his knees.

"I think," he panted, "I--I swan! I shouldn't wonder if I'd broke my
leg!"

"Um-hm! Well, if you'd broke your neck 'twouldn't have been no more'n
you deserve. Shame on you! Sneakin' thing!"

"Now, Dorindy, I--I wan't listenin'. I was just--"

"Don't talk to me. Don't you open your mouth. And if you open it to
anybody else about what you heard I'll--I declare I'll shut you up
in the dark closet and keep you there, as if you was three year old.
Sometimes I think your head ain't any older than that. Go right out of
this house."

"But where'll I go?"

"I don't care where you go. Only don't let me set eyes on you till
dinner time. March!"

Lute backed away as she advanced, waving both his hands and pleading and
expostulating.

"Dorindy, I tell you . . . WHAT makes you so unlikely? . . . I was just
. . . All right then," desperately, "I'll go! And if you never set eyes
on me again 'twon't be my fault. You'll be sorry then. If you never see
me no more you'll be sorry."

"I'll set eyes on you at dinner time. I ain't afraid of that. Git!"

She followed him to the kitchen and then returned.

"Ah hum!" she sighed, "it's pretty hard to remember that about darkest
just afore dawn when you have a burden like that on your shoulders to
lug through life. It's night most of the time then. Poor critter! he
means well enough, too. And once he was a likely enough young feller,
though shiftless, even then. But he had a long spell of fever three year
after we was married and he's never been good for much since. I try to
remember that, and to be patient with him, but it's a pretty hard job
sometimes."

She sighed again. I had often wondered how a woman of her sense could
have married Luther Rogers. Now she was telling me.

"I never really cared for him," she went on, looking toward the door
through which the discomfited eavesdropper had made his exit. "There was
somebody else I did care for, but he and I quarreled, and I took Luther
out of spite and because