prove nothing
at all. They said Primrose had really been lying to her all his life,
because she was so bossy he had to lie to keep peace in the fambly,
and she never ketched on. Well, if I was a ghost and had of been Mis'
Primrose's husband when I was a human, I wouldn't of come back neither,
even if she had of bully-ragged me into one of them death-bed promises.
I guess Primrose figgered he had earnt a rest.

If they is ghosts, what comfort they can get out of coming back where
they ain't wanted and scaring folks is more'n I can see. It's kind of
low down, I think, and foolish too. Them kind of ghosts is like these
here overgrown smart alecs that scares kids. They think they are mighty
cute, but they ain't. They are jest foolish. A human, or a ghost either,
that does things like that is jest simply got no principle to him. I
hearn a lot of talk about 'em, first and last, and I ain't ready to say
they ain't no ghosts, nor yet ready to say they is any. To say they is
any is to say something that is too plumb unlikely. And too many people
has saw them fur me to say they ain't any. But if they is, or they
ain't, so fur as I can see, it don't make much difference. Fur they
never do nothing, besides scaring you, except to rap on tables and tell
fortunes, and such fool things. Which a human can do it all better and
save the expense of paying money to one of these here sperrit mediums
that travels around and makes 'em perform. But all the same they has
been nights I has felt different about 'em myself, and less hasty to run
'em down. Well, it don't do no good to speak harsh of no one, not even a
ghost or a ordinary dead man, and if I was to see a ghost, mebby I would
be all the scareder fur what I have jest wrote.

Well, with all the talking back and forth we done about them ghosts we
couldn't agree. That afternoon it seemed like we couldn't agree about
anything. I knowed we would be going away from there before long, and I
says to myself before I go I'm going to have that girl fur my girl, or
else know the reason why. No matter what I was talking about, that idea
was in the back of my head, and somehow it kind of made me want to
pick fusses with her, too. We was setting on a log, purty deep into the
woods, and there come a time when neither of us had said nothing fur
quite a spell. But after a while I says:

"Martha, we'll be going away from here in two, three days now."

She never said nothing.

"Will you be sorry?" I a