He was eating his cake when a sound touched his ear from some distance, and shortly a woman came down the path carrying a vessel in her hand to draw water. She was a big, comely woman, and she walked as one who had no misfortunes and no misgivings. When she saw the Philosopher sitting by the well she halted a moment in surprise and then came forward with a good-humoured smile.
“Good morrow to you, sir,” said she.
“Good morrow to you too, ma’am,” replied the Philosopher. “Sit down beside me here and eat some of my cake.”
“Why wouldn’t I, indeed,” said the woman, and she did sit beside him.
The Philosopher cracked a large piece off his cake and gave it to her and she ate some.
“There’s a taste on that cake,” said she. “Who made it?”
“My wife did,” he replied.
“Well, now!” said she, looking at him. “Do you know, you don’t look a bit like a married man.”
“No?” said the Philosopher.
“Not a bit. A married man looks comfortable and settled: he looks finished, if you understand me, and a bachelor looks unsettled and funny, and he always wants to be running round seeing things. I’d know a married man from a bachelor any day.”
“How would you know that?” said the Philosopher.
“Easily,” said she, with a nod. “It’s the way they look at a woman. A married man looks at you quietly as if he knew all about you. There isn’t any strangeness about him with a woman at all; but a bachelor man looks at you very sharp and looks away and then looks back again, the way you’d know he was thinking about you and didn’t know what you were thinking about him; and so they are always strange, and that’s why women like them.”
“Why!” said the Philosopher, astonished, “do women like bachelors better than married men?”
“Of course they do,” she replied heartily. “They wouldn’t look at the side of the road a married man was on if there was a bachelor man on the other side.”
“This,” said the Philosopher earnestly, “is very interesting.”
“And the queer thing is,” she continued, “that when I came up the road and saw you I said to myself ‘it’s a bachelor man.’ How long have you been married, now?”
“I don’t know,” said the Philosopher. “Maybe it’s ten years.”
“And how many children would you have, mister?”
“Two,” he replied, and then corrected himself, “No, I have only one.”
“Is the other one dead?”
“I never had more than one.”
“Ten years married and only one child,” said she. “Why, man dear, you’re not a married man. What were you doing at all, at all! I wouldn’t like to be telling you the children I have living and dead. But what I say is that married or not you’re a bachelor man. I knew it the minute I looked at you. What sort of a woman is herself?”
“She’s a thin sort of woman,” cried the Philosopher, biting into his cake.
“Is she now?”
“And,” the Philosopher continued, “the reason I talked to you is because you are a fat woman.”
“I am not fat,” was her angry response.
“You are fat,” insisted the Philosopher, “and that’s the reason I like you.”
“Oh, if you mean it that way …” she chuckled.
“I think,” he continued, looking at her admiringly, “that women ought to be fat.”
“Tell you the truth,” said she eagerly, “I think that myself. I never met a thin woman but she was a sour one, and I never met a fat man but he was a fool. Fat women and thin men; it’s nature,” said she.
“It is,” said he, and he leaned forward and kissed her eye.
“Oh, you villain!” said the woman, putting out her hands against him.
The Philosopher drew back abashed.
“Forgive me,” he began, “if I have alarmed your virtue—”
“It’s the married man’s word,” said she, rising hastily: “now I know you; but there’s a lot of the bachelor in you all the same, God help you! I’m going home.” And, so saying, she dipped her vessel in the well and turned away.
“Maybe,” said the Philosopher, “I ought to wait until your husband comes home and ask his forgiveness for the wrong I’ve done him.”
The woman turned round on him and each of her eyes was as big as a plate.
“What do you say?” said she. “Follow me if you dare and I’ll set the dog on you; I will so,” and she strode viciously homewards.
After a moment’s hesitation the Philosopher took his own path across the hill.
The day was now well advanced, and as he trudged forward the happy quietude of his surroundings stole into his heart again and so toned down his recollection of the fat woman that in a little time she was no more than a pleasant and curious memory. His mind was exercised superficially, not in thinking, but in wondering how it was he had come to kiss a strange woman. He said to himself that such conduct was not right; but this statement was no more than the automatic working of a mind long exercised in the distinctions of right and wrong, for, almost in the same breath, he assured himself that what he had done did not matter in the least. His opinions were undergoing a curious change. Right and wrong were meeting and blending together so closely that it became difficult to dissever them, and the obloquy attaching to the one seemed out of proportion altogether to its importance, while the other
