Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/88

 you'll find a little shantyboat best—if you ain't in no hurry."

"I expect to live on the river quite a while."

"If you do that summers, you'll want about a pound of quinine 'long next summer sometime!" Mrs. Haney remarked.

"Oh, I don't care. Malaria. What's the odds?"

"Better take care of yourself." Mrs. Haney shook her head. "You're young. Don't do anything you'll be sorry for. When you're as old as I am, you'll see nothing much now mattered for you!"

Murdong was startled from his moment of pessimism. Mrs. Haney had read his thought.

"Yes, if you've done something, in six or seven years the Statue of Limitations'll save ye; if it's a girl, why, there's girls down thisaway'll make you forget you was ever up-the-bank."

"There's Delia," Jesse suggested, grinning.

"Now look't that!" Mrs. Haney retorted. "Since she was here Jesse's done nothing but think about her; well, so's everybody else, for that matter."

"Who is Delia?" Murdong asked.

"Why, that is what nobody seems to know." Mrs. Haney shook her head, continuing as she straightened up from putting biscuits into the oven to bake: "She's as pretty a bolt of silks and fine linen as I've seen dropping down Old Mississip' in many a day"