“God knows I’m paying it all day long every day and have been paying it for ten years.  Never at peace about her for an instant.  Protection at long distance is no joke.  I can’t sleep at night until she telephones me she is at home from the office on her duty nights and then I have to beg like a dog for the wire, just the word or two.  She will overwork and undereat and—­”

“David,” interrupted Sevier thoughtfully, “what do you really think is the matter?  Let’s get down to facts while we are about it.”

“Do you know, Andy, lately it has dawned upon me that Phoebe would like to dictate a life policy to me; hand me out a good, stiff life job.  I believe she would marry me to-morrow if she could see me permanently installed on the front seat of a grocery wagon—­permanently.  And I’ll come to it yet.”

“I believe you are right,” laughed Andrew.  “She really glories in her wage earning; it’s a phase of them these days.  She would actually hate living on your income.”

“Don’t I know it?  I suppose she would be content if she sewed on buttons and did the family wash to conserve the delivery wagon income.  I wish she’d marry me for love and then I’d hire her at hundreds per week to dust around the house and cook pies for me, gladly, gladly.”

“We’ve developed thorns with our new rose, Dave,” chuckled Andrew as he relighted his pipe.

“Sweet hope of heaven, yes,” groaned David.  “My gore drips all the time from the gashes.  I suppose it is a killing grief to her that I haven’t a star corporation practise instead of fooling around the criminal court fighting old Taylor to get a square deal for the darky rag-tag most of my time.  But, Andy, it makes me blaze house-high to see the way he hands the law out to ’em.  They can cut and fight as long as it is in a whisky dive and no indictment returned; but let one of ’em sidestep an inch in any other ignorant pitiful way and it’s the workhouse and the county road for theirs.

“And the number of ways that the coons can get up to call on me to square the deal, is amazing.  Just look at the week I’ve had!  All Monday and Tuesday I spent on the Darky Country Club affair; the poor nigs just hungering for some place to go off and act white in for a few hours.  Nobody would sell them an acre of ground near a car line and the dusky smart set was about to get its light put out.  Jeff and Tempie told me about it.  What did little Dave do but run around to persuade old man Elton to sell them that little point that juts out into the river two miles from town and just across from the rock quarry.  No neighbors to kick and the interurban runs through the field.  It really is a choice spot and I started their subscription with a hundred or two and got Williams to draw them some plans to fix up an old house that stands on the bank for a club-house.  They are wide-mouthed with joy; but it sliced two days to do it, which I might have spent on the grocery wagon.”