That is, if he could get his differences with this
here Buckner family patched up satisfactory. I wondered whether he would
be able to or not. Him and Colonel Tom were talking constant on the
train all the way up. From the little stretches of their talk I couldn't
help hearing, I guessed each one was telling the other all that had
happened to him in the time that had passed by. Colonel Tom what kind
of a life he had lived, and how he had married and his wife had died and
left him a widower without any kids. And the doctor--it was always
hard fur me to get to calling him anything but Doctor Kirby--how he had
happened to start out with a good chancet in life and turn into jest a
travelling fakir.

Well, I thinks to myself now that he has got to be that, mebby her and
him won't suit so well now, even if they does get their differences
patched up. Fur all the forgiving in the world ain't going to change
things, or make them no different. But, so long as the doctor appeared
to want to find her so derned bad, I was awful glad I had been the means
of getting him and Miss Lucy together. He had done a lot fur me, first
and last, the doctor had, and I felt like it helped pay him a little.
Though if they was to settle down like married folks I would feel like a
good old sport was spoiled in the doctor, too.

We had to change cars at Indianapolis to get to that there little town.
We was due to reach it about two o'clock in the afternoon. And the
nearer we got to the place the nervouser and nervouser all three of us
become. And not owning we was. The last hour before we hit the place, I
took a drink of water every three minutes, I was so nervous. And when
we come into the town I was already standing out onto the platform. I
wouldn't of been surprised to find Martha and Miss Lucy down there to
the station. But, of course, they wasn't. Fur some reason I felt glad
they wasn't.

"Now," I says to them two, as we got off the train, "foller me and I
will show you the house."

Everybody rubbers at strangers in a country town, and wonders why they
have come, and what they is selling, and if they are mebby going to
start a new grain elevator, or buy land, or what. The usual ones around
the depot rubbered at us, and I hearn one geezer say to another:

"See that big feller there? He was through here a year or two ago
selling patent medicine."

"You don't say so!" says the other one, like it was something important,
like a president or a