Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/317

 other men they liked fer all o' me. By sech way o' livin' a man gits peace, but not much besides. Wimmin won't stay long with a man that feels that way. Naow, I'm old an' eat my morsel alone, I feel more satisfied than when I had a woman in the house. I kin go an' come when I like, eat when I like, smoke an' drink all I like, set over the stove of evenin's as late as I like, work as little as I like. Sech life suits me purty good."

He paused and looked at her with a fine, sad smile of gentle irony. How delicate, how inexpressibly fine and delicate, she thought, were the lines about his mouth.

"Which would have meant more to you," she asked, "the fiddle or the woman?"

He came and sat down on the step beside her.

"I reckon the fiddle, Judy. The world's chuck full o' wimmin; but a man hain't got but one set o' gifts. If I could a learnt to play the fiddle good I'd like enough forgot her long ago an' loved some other woman. As it was, I couldn't take my mind away from thinkin' about her. An' the kinder hard part of it is, if I saw the woman again to-day she wouldn't mean no more to me than any other woman. On'y the feelin's I had for her then I hain't never been able to forget."

"An' air you glad you're alive right naow?"

"I can't say I hain't, Judy. I reckon livin's made up more out of a lot o' little things than any one big thing; an' there's a heap o' little things I git injoyment out'n. Mebbe there hain't nobody in Scott County likes a smoke an' a chew better'n what I do. Terbaccer an' a quiet back door yard—sun 'ithout no wind—an' my mornin' glories an' rose bushes to look at, them things gives peace and comfort, Judy. Naow, I hain't got no woman araound to sweep me off'n the stoop, I set there through a good many mornin's. I like my coffee an' corncake an' my bit o' fried hogmeat when I git up; an' after it I like my pipe with the blue an' gray streams o' smoke a-driftin' up into a sunbeam an' a-curlin' raound among the little specks o' dust. I like to hear hens sing an' cackle an' watch kittens play an' dawgs stretch theirse'ves in the warm sun an' growl in