Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/316

 Looking at his bowed knees and shoulders, his great seamed hands, his weatherbeaten face and the grizzled locks that curled behind his big ears and straggled over the brick-red creases of his neck, she thought how coarsened was every part of him except the fine, delicate lines about his mouth.

"Hain't life woth livin', Uncle Jabez?" she asked.

He laughed a short, harsh laugh and fell silent.

"Waal, I dunno, Judy," he said at last, meditatively shifting his quid of tobacco. "I reckon it makes a big diff'rence who you live it with an' a bigger diff'rence yet what work yuh lay yer hand to. Both o' them things, as I see it, is a matter of luck. An' if luck hain't with yuh—"

"Luck hain't been with you, Uncle Jabez?"

"Well, I reckon not. When I was a young feller I dearly loved to play on the fiddle. I thought about fiddlin' all day an' dreamed about it all night. But there wa'n't nobody to learn me haow to play, an' I didn't have much chanct to try to learn myse'f, 'cause as soon as I was big enough I had to make a hand in the field same's other boys. I was raised up in one o' the dark counties where they grow the dark terbaccer.

"When I was nineteen I married a purty, light-headed little gal, an' for a while I forgot all about the fiddle. I loved that woman, Judy. I poured out my heart like water for her. After a while I faound out she liked another feller better'n me, an' I told her she'd best go off with him. After she was gone I learned I'd been the laughin' stock o' the whole countryside fer months. I was the last to find out about the other feller. Sech things, you know, Judy, comes to every pair of ears but one."

He paused and looked meaningly at her. She avoided his looks, pulled a blade of ribbon grass and began splitting it between her long fingers.

"Well," he went on, "when I faound that out I took my clothes on the end of a stick an' come over here where nobody knowed me. Since then I've lived a spell with diff'rent wimmin' but I hain't never let none of 'em git a holt on the tender end o' my feelin's. They cud quit me termorrer or hev all the