into the
_Star_, the Captain folded up his newspaper and began studying the
trinkets in the holiday stock in the show case under the new books. A
comb and brush with tortoise shell backs seemed to arrest his eyes.
"Doc," he mused, "Christmas never comes that I don't think
of--her--mother! I guess I'd just about be getting that comb and brush
for her." The Doctor casually looked through the show case and saw what
had attracted the Captain. "Doc," again the Captain spoke, bending over
the case with his face turned from his auditor: "You're a doctor and are
supposed to know lots. Tell me this: How does a man break it to a woman
when he wants to leave her--eh?" Without waiting for an answer the
Captain went on: "And this is what puzzles me--how does he get used to
another one--with that one still living? You tell me that. I'd think
he'd be scared all the time that he would do something the way his first
wife had trained him not to. Of course," meditated the Captain, "right
at first, I suppose a man may feel a little coltish and all. But, Doc,
honest and true, when mother first left I kind of thought--well, I used
to enjoy swearing a little before we was married, and I says to myself I
guess I may as well have a damn or two as I go along--but, Doc, I can't
do it. Eh? Every time I set off the fireworks--she fizzles; I can see
mother looking at me that way." The old man went on earnestly: "Tell me,
Doc, you're a smart man--how Tom Van Dorn can do it. What say? 'Y gory
I'd be scared--right now! And if I thought I had to get used all over
again to another woman, and her ways of doing things--say of setting her
bread Friday night, and having a hot brick for her feet and putting her
hair in her teeth when she done it up, and dosing the children with
sassafras tea in spring--I'd just naturally take to the woods, eh? And
as for learning over again all the peculiarities of a new set of kin and
what they all like to eat and died of, and how they all treated their
first wives, and who they married--Doc? Doc?" The Captain shook a
dubious and doleful head. "Fourteen years, Doc," sighed the Captain.
"Pretty happy years--children coming on,--trouble visiting us with the
rest; sorrow--happiness--skimping and saving; her a-raking and scraping
to make a good appearance, and make things do; me trying one thing and
another, to make our fortune and her always kind and encouraging, and
hopeful; death standing between us and both of us sitting there