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"Here," she said, "I brought you this. It's some o' everything we hed. An' I'm obliged for my s'prise," she added, squeezing my hand in the darkness. "I surmised first thing, most, when Delia described you. No; land, no! Delia don't suspicion you got it up. She don't think of it bein' anybody but just God an' I donno's 'twas. An' that's what Abel thinks wa'n't Abel splendid?
But in an hour or so it come over her all of a sudden that 'twas awful quiet out by the woodpile. She hurried to the back door, and there was Ase, setting on the ground in the shade, his eyes shut and his back against the chopping block, and one poor lonesome slab in front of him with a couple of splinters knocked off it. That was his afternoon's work. Maybe you think the widow wa'n't mad.
But I want you should keep yourself nicely dressed down to Boston, so 't you can go with the best; I don't want you should feel anyways meechin' on account of your clothes. You got a good figure, Lem; you take after your father. Sometimes I wish you was a little bigger; but he wa'n't; and he had a big spirit.
"I looked, and there wa'n't no less than a dozen pages of James Kellys beginning with fifty James A.'s and endin' with four James Z.'s. The Y in 'New York' ought to be a C, judgin' by that directory. "'Godfrey mighty! I says. 'This ain't no forenoon's job, Jonadab. If you're goin' through that list you'll have to spend the rest of your life here.
"Yes, I knew her," nodded my neighbor, "and she didn't look much then like she does now. She was as pretty as a picture and there wa'n't a chap within sight of her what wa'n't head over heels in love with her. But there wa'n't never a chance for but two of us and we knew it: Joe Whitermore and a chap named Fred Farrell.
Make that artist feller take that cap off him, Jim. He's got to. I wish he could have seen some of my mates. They wa'n't Cunarder dudes, but they could make a crew hop 'round like a sand-flea in a clam bake." Or, when the picture happened to be a shore view: "What kind of a house is that? Did you ever see a house like that Down-East?
"As near as I calk'late, there wa'n't a half hour's more work to do on the old craft, and it had got to be sometime arter noon, but says the boys, 'Let's finish her off, now we've got so near through, and not have to come back ag'in. They was always a cheery set especially him when they took hold of a job, to put it through.
"Maybe you think I'd ought to throw in a halter so's you can lead him away!" "No," said Old Man Curry. "I won't insist on a halter. I got plenty of my own. You said yourself he wa'n't no good and I thought you meant it. I was just askin' if you'd sell him; that was all. Keep him till Judgment Day, if you want him. No harm done." Old Man Curry began to walk away.
We've hit the trail together afore now, and he's eighteen carat from his moccasins up, damn his mangy old hide, anyway. He was a shaver when he first hit this country. When you fellers was his age, you wa'n't dry behind the ears yet. He never was no kid. He was born a full-grown man. An' I tell you a man had to be a man in them days. This wa'n't no effete civilization like it's come to be now."
They say she's got dresses she won't never put on her back again silks an' satins an' woollens because she's outgrown 'em, an' they're all hangin' up in closets gettin' mothy, an' the doctor won't let her give 'em away. But this dress she give Elmira wa'n't give away, for I sent her back next day to do some extra work to pay for it. I ain't beholden to nobody.
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