“I was never more comfortable in my life,” said John. “Mrs. Bixbee has been kindness itself, and even permits me to smoke in the room. Let me give you a cigar.”
“Heh! You got putty well ’round Polly, I reckon,” said David, looking around the room as he lighted the cigar, “an’ I’m glad you’re comf’table—I reckon ’tis a shade better ’n the Eagle,” he remarked, with his characteristic chuckle.
“I should say so,” said John emphatically, “and I am more obliged than I can tell you.”
“All Polly’s doin’s,” asserted David, holding the end of his cigar critically under his nose. “That’s a trifle better article ’n I’m in the habit of smokin’,” he remarked.
“I think it’s my one extravagance,” said John semi-apologetically, “but I don’t smoke them exclusively. I am very fond of good tobacco, and—”
“I understand,” said David, “an’ if I had my life to live over agin, knowin’ what I do now, I’d do diff’rent in a number o’ ways. I often think,” he proceeded, as he took a pull at the cigar and emitted the smoke with a chewing movement of his mouth, “of what Andy Brown used to say. Andy was a curious kind of a customer ’t I used to know up to Syrchester. He liked good things, Andy did, an’ didn’t scrimp himself when they was to be had—that is, when he had the go-an’-fetch-it to git ’em with. He used to say, ‘Boys, whenever you git holt of a ten-dollar note you want to git it into ye or onto ye jest ’s quick ’s you kin. We’re here today an’ gone to-morrer,’ he’d say, ‘an’ the’ ain’t no pocket in a shroud,’ an’ I’m dum’d if I don’t think sometimes,” declared Mr. Harum, “that he wa’n’t very fur off neither. ’T any rate,” he added with a philosophy unexpected by his hearer, “ ’s I look back, it ain’t the money ’t I’ve spent fer the good times ’t I’ve had ’t I regret; it’s the good times ’t I might ’s well ’ve had an’ didn’t. I’m inclined to think,” he remarked with an air of having given the matter consideration, “that after Adam an’ Eve got bounced out of the gard’n they kicked themselves as much as anythin’ fer not havin’ cleaned up the hull tree while they was about it.”
John laughed and said that that was very likely among their regrets.
“Trouble with me was,” said David, “that till I was consid’able older ’n you be I had to scratch grav’l like all possessed, an’ it’s hard work now sometimes to git the idee out of my head but what the money’s wuth more ’n the things. I guess,” he remarked, looking at the ivory-backed brushes and the various toilet knickknacks of cut-glass and silver which adorned John’s bureau, and indicating them with a motion of his hand, “that up to about now you ben in the habit of figurin’ the other way mostly.”
“Too much so, perhaps,” said John; “but yet, after all, I don’t think I am sorry. I wouldn’t spend the money for those things now, but I am glad I bought them when I did.”
“Jess so, jess so,” said David appreciatively. He reached over to the table and laid his cigar on the edge of a book, and, reaching for his hip pocket, produced a silver tobacco box, at which he looked contemplatively for a moment, opening and shutting the lid with a snap.
“There,” he said, holding it out on his palm, “I was twenty years makin’ up my mind to buy that box, an’ to this day I can’t bring myself to carry it all the time. Yes, sir, I wanted that box fer twenty years. I don’t mean to say that I didn’t spend the wuth of it foolishly times over an’ agin, but I couldn’t never make up my mind to put that amount o’ money into that pertic’ler thing. I was alwus figurin’ that some day I’d have a silver tobacco box, an’ I sometimes think the reason it seemed so extrav’gant, an’ I put it off so long, was because I wanted it so much. Now I s’pose you couldn’t understand that, could ye?”
“Yes,” said John, nodding his head thoughtfully, “I think I can understand it perfectly,” and indeed it spoke pages of David’s biography.
“Yes, sir,” said David, “I never spent a small amount o’ money but one other time an’ got so much value, only I alwus ben kickin’ myself to think I didn’t do it sooner.”
“Perhaps,” suggested John, “you enjoyed it all the more for waiting so long.”
“No,” said David, “it wa’n’t that—I dunno—‘t was the feelin’ ’t I’d got there at last, I guess. Fur’s waitin’ fer things is concerned, the’ is such a thing as waitin’ too long. Your appetite’ll change mebbe. I used to think when I was a youngster that if ever I got where I c’d have all the custard pie I c’d eat that’d be all ’t I’d ask fer. I used to imagine bein’ baked into one an’ eatin’ my way out. Nowdays the’s a good many things I’d sooner have than custard pie, though,” he said with a wink, “I gen’ally do eat two pieces jest to please Polly.”
John laughed. “What was the other thing?” he asked.
“Other thing I once bought?” queried David. “Oh, yes, it was the fust hoss I ever owned. I give fifteen dollars fer him, an’ if he wa’n’t a dandy you needn’t pay me a cent. Crowbait wa’n’t no name fer him. He was stun blind on the off side, an’ couldn’t see anythin’ in pertic’ler on the nigh side—couldn’t get nigh ’nough, I reckon—an’ had most ev’rythin’ wrong with him that c’d ail a hoss; but I thought he was a thoroughbred. I was ’bout
