“How do you know I ain’t?  How do you know I ain’t doin’ just that now?”

“Mrs. Coffin!”

“John Ellery, you listen to me.  You think I’m a homely old woman, probably, set in my ways as an eight-day clock.  I guess I look like it and act like it.  But I ain’t so awful old—­on the edge of forty, that’s all.  And when I was your age I wa’n’t so awful homely, either.  I had fellers aplenty hangin’ round and I could have married any one of a dozen.  This ain’t boastin’; land knows I’m fur from that.  I was brought up in this town and even when I was a girl at school there was only one boy I cared two straws about.  He and I went to picnics together and to parties and everywhere.  Folks used to laugh and say we was keepin’ comp’ny, even then.

“Well, when I was eighteen, after father died, I went up to New Bedford to work in a store there.  Wanted to earn my own way.  And this young feller I’m tellin’ you about went away to sea, but every time he come home from a voyage he come to see me and things went on that way till we was promised to each other.  The engagement wa’n’t announced, but ’twas so, just the same.  We’d have been married in another year.  And then we quarreled.

“’Twas a fool quarrel, same as that kind gen’rally are.  As much my fault as his and as much his as mine, I cal’late.  Anyhow, we was both proud, or thought we was, and neither would give in.  And he says to me, ’You’ll be sorry after I’m gone.  You’ll wish me back then.’  And says I, bein’ a fool, ‘I guess not.  There’s other fish in the sea.’  He sailed and I did wish him back, but I wouldn’t write fust and neither would he.  And then come another man.”

She paused, hesitated, and then continued.

“Never mind about the other man.  He was handsome then, in a way, and he had money to spend, and he liked me.  He wanted me to marry him.  If—­if the other, the one that went away, had written I never would have thought of such a thing, but he didn’t write.  And, my pride bein’ hurt, and all, I finally said yes to the second chap.  My folks did all they could to stop it; they told me he was dissipated, they said he had a bad name, they told me twa’n’t a fit match.  And his people, havin’ money, was just as set against his takin’ a poor girl.  Both sides said ruin would come of it.  But I married him.

“Well, for the first year ’twa’n’t so bad.  Not happiness exactly, but not misery either.  That come later.  His people was well off and he’d never worked much of any.  He did for a little while after we was married, but not for long.  Then he begun to drink and carry on and lost his place.  Pretty soon he begun to neglect me and at last went off to sea afore the mast.  We was poor as poverty, but I could have stood that; I did stand it.  I took in sewin’ and kept up an appearance, somehow.  Never told a soul.  His folks come patronizin’ around and offered me money, so’s I needn’t disgrace them.  I sent ’em rightabout in a hurry.  Once in a while he’d come home, get tipsy and abuse me.  Still I said nothin’.  Thank God, there was no children; that’s the one thing I’ve been thankful for.