Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/32

 Delia laughed aloud at that.

"Really, Mrs. Mahna!" she cried, "I want to laugh right. But I've not been long on the river"

"I knowed it!"

"So I don't know what to—what to think!"

"It isn't the thinking that hurts down here," Mrs. Mahna shook her head. "It's the sayings that makes troubles. Going to trip clear down?"

"Oh, I think so. How far can you go down?"

"Clear to the jumping-off place!"

"Where's that?"

"For some, it's the forks of the Ohio," Mrs. Mahna declared, meaningly, continuing, "for some hit's Memphis, some hit's mouth of Old Arkansaw, and there's some goes to Vicksburg, and into Chaffelli! Down Chaffelli is the jumping-off place for most anybody!"

"How far is it to down Chaffelli?" Delia asked, breathlessly.

"Why, about seven hundred miles."

"And down Chaffelli—nobody comes back? Never?"

"Well, when a lady's dropped down Chaffelli, she ain't generally the same any more," Mrs. Mahna admitted.

"Seven hundred miles! It's an awful long ways!"

"You got all the time in the world to get there!" Mrs. Mahna observed.