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Updated: June 20, 2025
"I was intendin' to string the agony out and keep you on tenter-hooks a little spell, Louada Murilla," he went on. "But I hain't got the heart to do it. All is, they wouldn't accept that resignation, just as I've told you. It makes a man feel pretty good to be as popular as that in his own town.
He paused suddenly, for he caught sight of three muddy wagons trundling in procession into the yard. In the first one sat Constable Zeburee Nute, his obtrusive nickel badge on his overcoat. Cap'n Sproul looked at Louada Murilla, and she stared at him, and in sudden panic both licked dry lips and were silent. The topic they had been pursuing left their hearts open to terror.
He snapped up Louada Murilla with scant courtesy when she tried to give him the history of Smyrna's most famous organization, and timorously represented to him the social eminence he had attained. "It isn't as though you didn't have money, and plenty of it," she pleaded. "You can't get any more good out of it than by spending it that way.
As Cap'n Sproul trudged home, his little wife's arm tucked snugly in the hook of his own, he observed, soulfully: "Mattermony, Louada Murilla mattermony, it is a blessed state that it does the heart good to see folks git into as ought to git into it. As the poet says um-m-m, well, it's in that book on the settin'-room what-not. I'll read it to ye when we git home."
At the look in his eyes his wife began eager appeal, but he simply picked her up and placed her in the van from which the lunch-baskets had been taken. "There's Mis' Look," he said to the Cap'n. "She'll be glad to have the company of Mis' Sproul." Without a word the Cap'n picked up Louada Murilla and placed her beside the half-fainting Mrs. Look. Hiram closed the doors of the van.
Louada Murilla vows and declares she'll get a bill if I don't tell her the truth, and when you've told the truth once and sworn to it, and it don't stick, what kind of a show is a lie goin' to stand, when a man ain't much of a liar?" "If she's goin' to be caught we've got to catch her," insisted Hiram.
"For the last two weeks, Louada Murilla, it don't seem as if I've smacked you or you've smacked me but when I've jibed my head I've seen that ga'nt brother-in-law o' mine standing off to one side sourer'n a home-made cucumber pickle." "It's aggravatin' for you, I know it is," she faltered. "But I've been thinkin' that perhaps he'd get more reconciled as the time goes on."
The idea is, there are some fine touches needed in lyin' out of that part of the scrape, and, as the first selectman of Smyrna, I can't afford to take chances and depend on myself, and be showed up. I don't hold any A.B. certificate when it comes to lyin'. So for them fancy touches, I reckon I'll have to break my usual rule and hire a lawyer." He rose and yawned. "Is the cat put out, Louada?"
"It's good liniment, and I need some more for your toe, Aaron," pleaded his wife, putting her worsted out of her lap. "I'll chop that toe off and use it for cod bait before I'll cure it by buying any more liniment off'm him," the Cap'n retorted. "You jest keep your settin', Louada Murilla. I'll tend to your fam'ly end after this." He struggled up and began to hop toward the end of the piazza.
"Whew!" he whistled, sitting down in a porch chair and gazing off across the blue hills. "It's good to get out of that steam and stew down in that hall. I say, Louada Murilla, there ain't in this whole world a much prettier view than that off acrost them hills. It's a good picture for a man to spend his last days lookin' at." "I'm afraid you aren't going to get much time to look at it, husband."
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