The Soldier of the Valley Part 24

"A what?"

"A me-yule. The colt was dead beside you in the creek. Him and me fixed up the buggy agin, and he's gone to borry Harmon's me-yule so as you uns can git back to Black Log."

"Tip's left Black Log forever," I said firmly.

Then John Shadrack's widow laughed. She laughed so hard that she blew the ashes out of her pipe, and they showered down over my face, and made me wink and sputter.

"There--there," she said solicitously, dusting them away with her hand.

"But it tickled me so to hear you say Tip wasn't goin' back. Why, he's been most crazy since you come. He's afraid his wife'll marry agin before he gits home. I've been tellin' him how nice it was to have you both, and that jest makes him roar. He's never been away so long before."

"He thinks maybe Nanny will give him up this time?"

"Exact."

The old woman smoked in silence a long while. Then she said suddenly, "She must be a lovely woman."

"Who?" I asked.

"Tip's wife."

"Who told you?" I demanded.

"Tip."

This was strange in a fugitive husband, one who had fled across the mountains to escape a perpetual yammering.

"Tip!" I said.

"Yes, Tip," she answered. "Him and me was settin' there in the kitchen last night, and you was sleepin' away in here, and he told me all about Black Log. It must be a lovely place--Black Log--so different from Happy Walley. There's no folks here, that's the trouble. There's Harmonses a mile down the walley, and below him there's the Spinks a mile, and up the walley across the run there's my brother, Joe Smith, and his family--but we don't often have strangers here. The tax collector, he was up last month, and then you come. You have been a treat. I ain't enjoyed anything so much for a long time. There's nothin' like company."

"Even when it can't talk?" I said.

"But I could powwow," she answered cheerily. "Between fixin' up the buggy, and cookin' and makin' you and Tip comfortable and powwowin'

you, I ain't had a minute's time to think--it's lovely."

"What has Tip been doing all this while?"

"Talkin' about his wife. She _must_ be nice. Did you ever hear her sing?"

"I should say I had," I answered.

The whining strains of "Jordan's Strand" came wandering out of the past, out of the kitchen, joining with the sizzle of the cooking and the clatter of the pans.

"I should say I had," I said again.

"She must be a splendid singer," John Shadrack's widow exclaimed with much enthusiasm. "Tip says she has one of the best tenor voices they is. He says sometimes he can hear her clean from his clearin' down to your barn."

"Farther," said I. "All the way to the school-house."

"Indeed! Now that's nice. I allow she must be very handsome."

"Handsome?" said I, a bit incredulous.

"Why, Tip says she's the best-lookin' woman in the walley, and that she's a terrible tasty dresser."

"Terrible," I muttered.

"Indeed! Now that's nice. And is she spare or fleshy?"

"Medium," I said. "Just right."

"That's nice. But what'll she run to? It makes a heap of difference to a woman what she runs to. Now I naterally take on."

"I should say Nanny Pulsifer would naturally lose weight," I answered.

"That's nice. It's so much better to run to that--it's easier gittin'

around. Tip says she has a be-yutiful figger. There's nothin' like figger. If there's anythin' I hate to see it's a first-cla.s.s gingham fittin' a woman like it was hung there to air. But about Tip's wife agin--she must have a lovely disposition?"

"Splendid," I said.

"That's what Tip says. He told me that oncet in a while when he was kind of low-down she'd git het-up and spited like, but ordinarily, he says, she's jest a-singin' and a-singin' and makin' him comf'table and helpin' the children. And them children! I'm jest longin' to see 'em.

They must be lovely."

"From what Tip says," I interjected.

"From what Tip says," she went on. "He was tellin' me about Earl and Alice Eliza, and Pearl and Cevery and the rest of 'em. He says it's jest a pickter to see 'em all in bed together--a perfect pickter."

"A perfect picture," said I sleepily.

"Tip must have a lovely home. Why, he tells me they have a sewin'-machine."

"Lovely," said I. "And a spring-bed."

"And a double-heater stove," said she.

"And an accordion," said I.

"And a was.h.i.+n'-machine," said she.

"And two hogs."

"And he tells me he's going to git her a melodium."

"Indeed," said I. "Why, I thought he was never going back."

"To sech a lovely home?" The old woman held up her hands. "He's goin'

jest as soon as he gets that me-yule and you're able." She laid her hand on my forehead. "There," she cried, "it's painin' you again, poor thing--that terrible spot."