“That’s w’at I say,” Jombateeste hastened to interpose.  “Got it from the ’Ebrew.  Feel it in ’is bone.”

Out under the stars Jackson and Westover silently mounted the hill-side together.  At one of the thank-you-marms in the road the sick man stopped, like a weary horse, to breathe.  He took off his hat and wiped the sweat of weakness that had gathered upon his forehead, and looked round the sky, powdered with the constellations and the planets.  “It’s sightly,” he whispered.

“Yes, it is fine,” Westover assented.  “But the stars of our Northern nights are nothing to what you’ll see in Egypt.”

Jackson repeated, vaguely:  “Egypt!  Where I should like to go is Mars.”  He fixed his eyes on the flaming planets, in a long stare.  “But I suppose they have their own troubles, same as we do.  They must get sick and die, like the rest of us.  But I should like to know more about ’em.  You believe it’s inhabited, don’t you?”

Westover’s agnosticism did not, somehow, extend to Mars.  “Yes, I’ve no doubt of it.”

Jackson seemed pleased.  “I’ve read everything I can lay my hands on about it.  I’ve got a notion that if there’s any choosin’, after we get through here, I should like to go to Mars for a while, or as long as I was a little homesick still, and wanted to keep as near the earth as I could,” he added, quaintly.

Westover laughed.  “You could study up the subject of irrigation, there; they say that’s what keeps the parallel markings green on Mars; and telegraph a few hints to your brother in Colorado, after the Martians perfect their signal code.”

Perhaps the invalid’s fancy flagged.  He drew a long, ragged breath.  “I don’t know as I care to leave home, much.  If it wa’n’t a kind of duty, I shouldn’t.”  He seemed impelled by a sudden need to say, “How do you think Jefferson and mother will make it out together?”

“I’ve no doubt they’ll manage,” said Westover.

“They’re a good deal alike,” Jackson suggested.

Westover preferred not to meet his overture.  You’ll be back, you know, almost as soon as the season commences, next summer.”

“Yes,” Jackson assented, more cheerfully.  “And now, Cynthy’s sure to be here.”

“Yes, she will be here,” said Westover, not so cheerfully.

Jackson seemed to find the opening he was seeking, in Westover’s tone.  “What do you think of gettin’ married, anyway, Mr. Westover?” he asked.

“We haven’t either of us thought so well of it as to try it, Jackson,” said the painter, jocosely.

“Think it’s a kind of chance?”

“It’s a chance.”

Jackson was silent.  Then, “I a’n’t one of them,” he said, abruptly, “that think a man’s goin’ to be made over by marryin’ this woman or that.  If he a’n’t goin’ to be the right kind of a man himself, he a’n’t because his wife’s a good woman.  Sometimes I think that a man’s wife is the last person in the world that can change his disposition.  She can influence him about this and about that, but she can’t change him.  It seems as if he couldn’t let her if he tried, and after the first start-off he don’t try.”