Page:Orange Grove.djvu/115

 "It was good enough for you if you had no higher motive than that."

"Half the folks in the world does jest so, only they don't come out honest an' say so. But I come off rather worse than some on 'em, for he was a mean old scamp; but then I was lucky, he didn't live long."

"And you were glad of it?"

"Of course I was. What did you 'spose I wanted to be harnessed to him all my life for?"

"You have made up this story to impose on my credulity. If true you would not make so light of it."

"Jest as you like, but I guess if you'd had to live with him, you'd believe it fast enough. He come home one night with one of his drunken cronies, and set up and talked and laughed till he put his jaw out, and how he did look."

"Was that what caused his death?"

"No indeed, I guess he didn't die so easy as that. The other man went after the doctor, an' he, poor soul had just gone to bed, and didn't want to be disturbed I 'spose for a drunken man's frolic, or may be he thought 'twas nothin' but the ager, and instead o' comin' he sent two big black pills, an' then I thought I should'a died laughin' to think how they was goin' to set a man's jaw when it was out o' jint."

"How heartless that was in you when he was suffering so much."

"My laughin' didn't hurt him any, and it made me feel better. 'Twas bad enough for it to happen