e had drifted in
on Mrs. Mame Caope and Jim and Mr. Falteau and Mrs. Dobstan and Parson
Rasba, instead of falling among those other kinds of people.

Mrs. Caope was an old acquaintance of her mother who had lived all her
life on the rivers. She was a better boatman than most, and could pilot
a stern-wheel whiskey boat or set hoop nets for fish.

"If I get a man, and he's mean," Mrs. Caope had said often, "I shift
him. I 'low a lady needs protection up the bank er down the riveh, but I
'low if my cookin' don't pay my board, an' if fish I take out'n my nets
ain't my own, and the boat I live in ain't mine--well, I've drapped two
men off'n the stern of my boat to prove hit!"

Mrs. Caope had not changed at all, not in the years Nelia could recall,
except to change her name. It was the custom, to ask, perfectly
respectfully, what name she might be having now, and Mrs. Mame never
took offence, being good natured, and understanding how hard it was to
keep track of her matrimonial adventures, episodes of sentiment but
without any nonsense.

"Sho!" Mrs. Caope had said once, "I disremember if I couldn't stand him
er he couldn't stand me!"

Nelia, adrift in her own life, and sure now that she never had really
cared very much for Gus Carline, admitted to herself that her husband
had been only a step up out of the poverty and misery of her parents'
shack.

"You see, missy, I'm a sinner myse'f!"

Her ears had caught the depths of the pathos of his regret and sorrow,
and she pitied him. At the same time her own thoughts were ominous, and
her face, regular, bright, vivacious, showed a hardness which was alien
to it.

Nelia went over to Mrs. Caope's for supper, and Parson Rasba was there,
having brought in a wild goose which he had shot on Wolf Island while
going about his meditations that afternoon. Mrs. Caope had the goose
sizzling in the big oven of her coal range--coal from Pittsburgh barges
wrecked along the river on bars--and the big supper was sweeter smelling
than Rasba ever remembered having waited for.

Mrs. Caope told him to "ask one of them blessin's if yo' want, Parson!"
and the four bowed their heads.

Jim Caope then fell upon the bird, neck, wings, and legs, and while he
carved Mrs. Caope scooped out the dressing, piled up the fluffy
biscuits, and handed around the soup tureen full of gravy. Then she
chased the sauce with glass jars full of quivering jellies, reaching
with one hand to take hot biscuits from th