with ’em an’ sp’iled the pleasure.  Thar was the evening I dressed up in my best clothes an’ ran off to Applegate to take a yellow haired circus lady, in pink skirts, out to supper.  It ought to have been a fine, glorious bit of wickedness to remember, but the truth was that I’d put on a new pair of boots, an’ one of ’em pinched so in the toes that I couldn’t think of another thing the whole blessed evening.  ’Tis al’ays that way in my experience of life—­when you glance back or glance befo’ ’tis pleasant enough to the eye, but at the moment while you’re linin’ it thar’s al’ays the damn shoe that pinches.”

“Ah, you’re right, you’re right, Mr. Doolittle,” remarked William Ming, who had lingered in the doorway to follow the conversation.

“It’s life, that’s what it is,” commented Solomon, heaving a sigh that burst a button hole in his blue shirt.  “An’ what’s mo’ than life, it’s marriage.  When I see the way some men wear themselves out with wantin’ little specks of women, I say to myself over an’ over agin, ’Ah, if they only knew that thar ain’t nothin’ in it except the wantin’.’”

“Not another thing—­not another blessed mite of a thing,” agreed William, who had imbibed secretly again behind the back of his wife.

“I’ve know a man to throw himself into the river from sheer love befo’ marriage,” said Solomon, “an’ two weeks arter the woman had taken him, to fall out with her because she’d put too much shortenin’ in his pie-crust.”

“It’s all love befo’ marriage an’ all shortenin’ arterwards,” observed Betsey Bottom, with scorn.  “I’ve al’ays noticed in this world that the less men folks have to say for themselves the better case they make of it.  When they’ve spent all thar time sence Adam tryin’ to throw dust in the eyes of women, it would be better manners if they’d stop twittin’ ’em because they’d succeeded.”

“True, true, you never spoke a truer word, ma’am, in my acquaintance with you,” responded Solomon, with what hasty gallantry he could summon.  “I was thinkin’ them very things to myself when you mentioned ’em.  Not that anybody could throw dust in yo’ eyes, even if he tried to.”

“Well, it would take mo’n a man to do that, I reckon,” she replied, amiably enough, “I saw through ’em early, an’ when you’ve once seen through ’em it’s surprisin’ how soon the foolishness of men begins to look like any other foolishness on earth.”

She was listened to with respectful and flattering attention by her guests, who leaned forward with pipes in hand and vacant, admiring eyes on her still comely features.  It was a matter of gossip that she had refused half the county, and that her reason for marrying William had been that he wasn’t “set,” and would be easy to manage.  The event had proved the prophecy, and to all appearance it was a perfectly successful mating.

Abel was the first to move under her gaze, and rising from his chair by the fire, he took up his hat, and made his way slowly through the group, which parted grudgingly, and closed quickly together.