Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/187

Rh, "only he allers tries to be funny. And why shouldn't he? He's nothin' to trouble hisself about. No more's the rest on us, for that matter."

"I wish I hadn't," exclaimed the surfeited selector, as he stuck the haft of his knife and fork on the table—the signal that "he'd done," and "a child could play with him"—and he looked out of the open, paneless window, across the valley, and thought of the howling, poverty-stricken wilderness, not twelve miles away, with soil as good as this, but parched for lack of water; and his eyes filled with tears, at thought of the contrast suggested.