“Yes,” said Miss Verjoos, giving her hand with a mischievous gleam in her half-shut eyes, “I was enchanted with ‘Solomon Levi.’ ”
XXXVIII
David and John had been driving for some time in silence. The elder man was apparently musing upon something which had been suggested to his mind. The horses slackened their gait to a walk as they began the ascent of a long hill. Presently the silence was broken by a sound which caused John to turn his head with a look of surprised amusement—Mr. Harum was singing. The tune, if it could be so called, was scaleless, and these were the words:
“Monday mornin’ I married me a wife,
Thinkin’ to lead a more contented life;
Fiddlin’ an’ dancin’ the’ was played,
To see how unhappy poor I was made.“Tuesday mornin’, ‘bout break o’ day,
While my head on the piller did lay,
She tuned up her clack, an’ scolded more
Than I ever heard before.”
“Never heard me sing before, did ye?” he said, looking with a grin at his companion, who laughed and said that he had never had that pleasure. “Wa’al, that’s all ’t I remember on’t,” said David, “an’ I dunno ’s I’ve thought about it in thirty year. The’ was a number o’ verses which carried ’em through the rest o’ the week, an’ ended up in a case of ’sault an’ battery, I rec’lect, but I don’t remember jest how. Somethin’ we ben sayin’ put the thing into my head, I guess.”
“I should like to hear the rest of it,” said John, smiling.
David made no reply to this, and seemed to be turning something over in his mind. At last he said:
“Mebbe Polly’s told ye that I’m a wid’wer.”
John admitted that Mrs. Bixbee had said as much as that.
“Yes, sir,” said David, “I’m a wid’wer of long standin’.”
No appropriate comment suggesting itself to his listener, none was made.
“I hain’t never cared to say much about it to Polly,” he remarked, “though fer that matter Jim Bixbee, f’m all accounts, was about as poor a shack as ever was turned out, I guess, an’—”
John took advantage of the slight hesitation to interpose against what he apprehended might be a lengthy digression on the subject of the deceased Bixbee by saying:
“You were quite a young fellow when you were married, I infer.”
“Two or three years younger ’n you be, I guess,” said David, looking at him, “an’ a putty green colt too in some ways,” he added, handing over the reins and whip while he got out his silver tobacco box and helped himself to a liberal portion of its contents. It was plain that he was in the mood for personal reminiscences.
“As I look back on’t now,” he began, “it kind o’ seems as if it must ’a’ ben some other feller, an’ yet I remember it all putty dum’d well too—all but one thing, an’ that the biggist part on’t, an’ that is how I ever come to git married at all. She was a widdo’ at the time, an’ kep’ the boardin’ house where I was livin’. It was up to Syrchester. I was better lookin’ them days ’n I be now—had more hair at any rate—though,” he remarked with a grin, “I was alwus a better goer than I was a looker. I was doin’ fairly well,” he continued, “but mebbe not so well as was thought by some.
“Wa’al, she was a good-lookin’ woman, some older ’n I was. She seemed to take some shine to me. I’d roughed it putty much alwus, an’ she was putty clever to me. She was a good talker, liked a joke an’ a laugh, an’ had some education, an’ it come about that I got to beauin’ her ’round quite a consid’able, and used to go an’ set in her room or the parlor with her sometimes evenin’s an’ all that, an’ I wouldn’t deny that I liked it putty well.”
It was some minutes before Mr. Harum resumed his narrative. The reins were sagging over the dashboard, held loosely between the first two fingers and thumb of his left hand, while with his right he had been making abstracted cuts at the thistles and other eligible marks along the roadside.
“Wa’al,” he said at last, “we was married, an’ our wheels tracked putty well fer quite a consid’able spell. I got to thinkin’ more of her all the time, an’ she me, seemin’ly. We took a few days off together two three times that summer, to Niag’ry, an’ Saratogy, an’ ’round, an’ had real good times. I got to thinkin’ that the state of matrimony was a putty good institution. When it come along fall, I was doin’ well enough so ’t she could give up bus’nis, an’ I hired a house an’ we set up housekeepin’. It was really more on my account than her’n, fer I got to kind o’ feelin’ that when the meat was tough or the pie wa’n’t done on the bottom that I was ’sociated with it, an’ gen’ally I wanted a place of my own. But,” he added, “I guess it was a mistake, fur ’s she was concerned.”
“Why?” said John, feeling that some show of interest was incumbent.
“I reckon,” said David, “ ’t she kind o’ missed the comp’ny an’ the talk at table, an’ the goin’s on gen’ally, an’ mebbe the work of runnin’ the place—she was a great worker—an’ it got to be some diff’rent, I s’pose, after a spell, settin’ down to three meals a day with jest only me ’stid of a tableful, to say nothin’ of the evenin’s. I was glad enough to have a place of my own, but at the same time I hadn’t ben used to settin’ ’round with nothin’ pertic’ler to do or say, with somebody else that hadn’t neither, an’ I wa’n’t then nor ain’t now, fer that matter, any great hand fer readin’. Then, too, we’d moved into a
