et left all alone with my troubles. The doctor
and the colonel, they walked right past us when she said yes, and up
toward the house, and left her and me standing there. I could of went
along and butted in, mebby. But I says to myself I will have the derned
thing out here and now, and know the worst. And I was so interested in
my trouble and Martha that I didn't even notice if Miss Lucy met 'em at
the door, and if so, how she acted. When I next looked up they was all
in the house.

"Martha--" I begins. But she breaks in.

"Danny," she says, looking like she is going to cry, "don't l-l-look at
me l-l-like that. If you knew ALL you wouldn't blame me. You--"

"Wouldn't blame you fur what?" I asts her.

"I know it's wrong of me," she says, begging-like.

"Mebby it is and mebby it ain't," I says. "But what is it?"

"But you never wrote to me," she says.

"You never wrote to me," I says, not wanting her to get the best of me,
whatever it was she might be talking about.

"And then HE came to town!--"

"Who?" I asts her.

"Don't you know?" she says. "The man I am going to marry."

When she said that I felt, all of a sudden, like when you are broke and
hungry and run acrost a half dollar you had forgot about in your other
pants. I was so glad I jumped.

"Great guns!" I says.

I had never really knowed what being glad was before.

"Oh, Danny, Danny," she says, putting her hands in front of her face,
"and here you have come to claim me for your bride!"

Which showed me why she had looked so scared. That there girl had went
and got engaged to another feller. And had been laying awake nights
suffering fur fear I would turn up agin. And now I had. Looey, he always
said never to trust a woman!

"Martha," I says, "you ain't acted right with me."

"Oh, Danny, Danny," she says, "I know it! I know it!"

"Some fellers in my place," I says, "would raise a dickens of a row."

"I DID love you once," she says, looking at me from between her fingers.

"Yes," says I, acting real melancholy, "you did. And now you've quit it,
they don't seem to me to be nothing left to live fur." Martha, she was
an awful romanceful girl. I got the notion that mebby she was enjoying
her own remorsefulness a little bit. I fetched a deep sigh and I says:

"Some fellers would kill theirselves on the spot!"

"Oh!--Oh!--Oh!--" says Martha.

"But, Martha," says I, "I ain't that mean. I ain't going to do that."

That dern girl ackshellay give