Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/117

 "I don't want to quit it." Murdong shook his head. "I want to live on it. That's one reason I wanted a houseboat, so I would have a kind of a home"

"Hit's a real home," Mrs. Mahna declared. "I've lived up the bank some, but I never seen no mansion on the Bottoms that'd equal a little white shantyboat. Theh's work enough, takin' care of a shantyboat with two rooms. But I 'low I wouldn't take cyar of any house with forty-fifty, or ten-twelve rooms, not if 'twas give to me! If I have room to set, a bed that'll let me stretch, an' room to turn around in for a kitchen, I'm satisfied."

"But don't you get lonesome?" Murdong asked. "Never seeing people for weeks sometimes?"

"Shucks!" the river woman snorted. "Me lonesome? Sometimes I boot Roy an' the Old Man up the bank, I get so sick 'n tired of so much people around. And then I get to know trippers that's going down. Hyar's you, out of Chicago, and hyar's Delia, out'n the Ohio! Here to-day, gone to-morrow, maybe. Like's not when I see you down to Arkansaw Old Mouth come Christmas I'll have seen twenty-forty—a hundred strangehs. Never two alike, never the same thing happening twict. I just friendly along, and don't care. Blow high, blow low. You see what I mean? I couldn't stand hit, living up the bank, where you always see the same lady next door,