“Good-evening,” he said cheerfully.  “It’s rather chilly to be swinging on the gate.”

“I was waiting for Tim,” I answered.

Perry gave a little dry cackle.  “Let’s go in,” he said.  “It’s too cold out here to discuss these great events.”

I did not know what he meant, neither did I much care, for Perry always treated the most trivial affairs in the most elegant language he knew.  But now that he stood there with his back to the fire, warming his hands, he made himself more clear.

“Well, Mark,” he said, “I congratulate you most heartily.”

I divined his meaning.  It did not seem odd that he had learned my secret, for I was lost in admiration of his having once weighed an event at its proper value.  So I thanked him and returned to my chair and my pipe.

“Of course it hurts me a bit here,” said he, laying his hand on his watch-pocket.  “I had hopes at one time myself, but I fear I depended too much on music and elocution.  Do you know I’m beginnin’ to think that a man shouldn’t depend so much on art with weemen.  I notice them gets along best who doesn’t keep their arms entirely occupied with gestures and workin’ the fiddle.”

[Illustration:  “Of course it hurts me a bit here.”]

Perry winked sagely at this and cackled.  He rocked violently to and fro on his feet, from heel to toe and toe to heel.

“Yet it ain’t a bit onreasonable,” he went on.  “The artist thinks he is amusin’ others, when, as a matter of fact, he is gettin’ about ninety per cent. of the fun himself.  We allus enjoys our own singin’ best.  I see that now.  I thought it up as I was comin’ down the road and I concided that the next time I seen a likely lookin’ Mrs. Perry Thomas, she could do the singin’ and the fiddlin’ and the elocution, and I’d set by and look on and say, ‘Ain’t it lovely?’”

“You bear your disappointments bravely,” said I.

“Not at all,” Perry responded.  “I’m used to ’em.  Why, I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t disappointed.  Some day a girl will happen along who won’t disappoint me, and then I’ll be so set back, I allow I won’t have courage to get outen the walley.  Had I knowd yesterday how as all the courtin’ I’ve done since the first of last June was to come tumblin’ down on my head to-night like ceilin’ plaster, not a wink of sleep would I ‘a’ had.  Now I know it.  Does I look like I was goin’ to jump down the well?  No, sir.  ‘Perry,’ I says, ’you’ve had a nice time settin’ a-dreamin’ of her; you’ve sung love-songs to her as you followed the plough; you’ve pictured her at your side as you’ve strayed th’oo fields of daisies and looked at the moon.  Now in the natural course of events she’s goin’ to marry another.  When she’s gettin’ peekit like trying to keep the house goin’ and at the same time prevent her seven little ones from steppin’ into the cistern or fallin’ down the hay-hole, you can make up another pretty pickter with one of the nine hundred million other weemen on this globe as the central figger!’”