rked for you, he said. He says you can get along
anywhere with your dukes. Find everythin' in town all right?"

"Had a great time, walking about in the park. Shortest day I ever
spent."

"Haven't fixed any date or anythin' of the sort, I guess."

"We haven't said anything, but it's understood. We caught each other
looking at houses and flats, and had to laugh."

"I guess that's about as good a way as any. But love as a general thing
is full of a good deal of talk. Well, my affairs of that sort are over
now."

"So the freckled woman has cured you."

"Oh, no, I forgot her in no time. Fact is I never did love but one woman
and I married her."

"What's become of her?"

"She's up at Antioch."

"Did you see her?"

"Oh, yes, and we made it up. We're goin' to live together. I understood
from what you said t'other day that you wan't goin' to keep this place
another year, so I told the old woman that I wanted it. Yes, we are
goin' to take a fresh start. You said once that I ought to have cut her
throat, but I can't look at it in that light. After all, she's as good
as I am."

"A devilish sight better," said Milford.

"I guess you're right. So you wouldn't cut her throat?"

"Well, not if I were you."

"I don't exactly understand the difference, but it's all right. I got to
thinkin' this way about it, Bill. Most any woman will take a man back,
and I said to myself that it oughtn't to be so one-sided as that. I
heard she was at Antioch, at her aunt's house, so I goes up there. She
was a-sweepin' when I stepped up. And she dropped the broom. I says,
'Don't be in a hurry,' and she stopped and looked at me. 'And is this
you, Bob?' she says. I told her it was, so far as I knowed. She come up
close to me and said I'd been workin' too hard. She took hold of my hand
and turned it loose quick, lookin' like she wanted to cry. I says,
'Don't turn me loose. I've been thinkin' about you.' 'About such a thing
as I am?' she says. Then I told her she was a heap better than me, and
she cried. She said she never would have run away, but she drank some
wine with one of her aunt's boarders. I told her all that made no
difference now if she could promise not to run away again. And then she
grabbed me, Bill; she grabbed me round the neck, and that was the way we
made up."

"Go and bring her here," said Milford, turning his eyes from the light
of the lamp. "It makes no difference what I said last week or the week
before, or at any ti