test figure and drew a straight line a foot long. And Christian God go
so--he drew a second straight line perpendicular to the first. I was
made to see the line of his own God extending over the earth some fifty
feet above its surface, while the line of the Christian God went
straight and endlessly into the heavens. "Injin God stay
close--Christian God go straight up. Whoosh!" He looked toward the
zenith to indicate the vanishing line. "I think mebbe both O.K. You
think both O.K.?"

"Mebbe," I said.

Pete retraced the horizontal line of his own God and the perpendicular
line of the other.

"Funny business," said he tolerantly.

"Funny business," I echoed. And then--the moment seeming ripe for
intimate personal research: "Pete, how about that brother-in-law of
yours? Is he a one-God Christian or a two-God, like you?"

He hurriedly brushed out his lines, flashed me one of his uneasy side
glances, and seemed not to have heard my question. He sprang lightly
from his heels, affected to scan a murky cloud-bank to the south,
ignited his second cigarette from the first, and seemed relieved by the
actual diversion of Laura, his present lawful consort, now plodding
along the road just outside the fence.

Laura is ponderous and billowy, and her moonlike face of rusty bronze is
lined to show that she, too, has gone down a little into the vale of
years. She was swathed in many skirts, her shoulders enveloped by a
neutral-tinted shawl, and upon her head was a modist toque of light
straw, garlanded with pink roses. This may have been her hunt constume,
for the carcasses of two slain rabbits swung jauntily from her girdle.
She undulated by us with no sign. Pete's glistening little eyes lingered
in appraisal upon her noble rotundities and her dangling quarry. Then,
with a graceful flourish of the new cigarette, he paid tribute to the
ancient fair.

"That old mahala of mine, she not able to chew much now; but she's some
swell chicken--b'lieve me!"

I persisted in the impertinence he had sought to turn.

"How about this brother-in-law of yours, Pete?"

Again he was deaf. He picked up his axe, appearing to weigh the
resumption of his task against a reply to this straight question. He
must have found the alternative too dreadful; he leaned upon the axe,
thus winning something of the dignity of labour, with none of its pains,
and grudgingly asked:

"Mebbe some liars tell you in conversation about that old
b'other-in-law?"

"