s upheaval, and
said she'd met the old man and woman there, and that they both looked so
lonely and peaked and ill-fed that she felt like she was acting
unfaithful to Dick's memory in living in one county and them in
another--well, that's the way it happened. I confess I never thought the
pair looked so bad when they come over, for they was awful cheerful, and
seemed to 'a' been fed on the fat of the land. Hettie told me afterward
that she'd been sending 'em all her spare change, so that was explained.
You'd never know the old woman was about unless you stumbled over her in
the dark, for she is as quiet as a mouse, and never says a thing nor
listens to anybody but him. He's all right. The old man's all right. I
really think I'd miss 'im if he was to leave. I never like to encourage
him too much, but I often laugh at the jokes he plays on folks. People
poke fun at me for having him around, but he drives off the blues
sometimes. He showed me what to expect from him the first day he got
here. He come down to the store, and walked in and looked around till he
saw the tobacco-boxes behind the counter, and he went to 'em and pulled
a plug off of each one, and smelt of 'em and looked at 'em in the light.
Then he took the best one and sidled over to me. He run his hand down
in his pocket, and I thought he was going to pay me for it, but he was
just hunting for his knife. He grinned as he clipped a corner off the
plug, and stuck it betwixt his short teeth. 'You'll find that I'm a
great chawer and smoker, Alf,' he said. Then he axed me if I had such a
thing as a empty dry-goods box about, and when I pointed to some in the
back-yard that I was saving to put seed-corn in, he said he'd take one
and wanted me to have the horses and wagon sent over for a pig they had
left. 'I wouldn't send for it,' he said, 'but it has got to be a sort of
pet. Its pen used to be right at our window, an' me an' the old lady
miss its squealing, especially in the morning. It is as good as an
alarm-clock.'"

The girl wiped a smile from her merry mouth. "Excuse me, Alfred," she
said, "but it does seem powerful funny. It must be the way you tell it."

"I'm glad it's funny to _somebody_, and you are more than excusable," he
said, dryly. "If I could get as good a joke as that on an enemy of mine
I'd never kill 'im in a duel; I'd keep him alive to laugh at."

"You didn't say whether Mr. Wrinkle paid for the tobacco or not," Dixie
reminded him, expectantly.