I knowed the way well enough, and where the house was, but as we went around the turn in the road I run acrost a surprised feeling. I come onto the place where our campfire had been them nights we was there. Looey had drug an old fence post onto the fire one night, and the post had only burned half up. The butt end of it, all charred and flaked, was still laying in the grass and weeds there. It hit me with a queer feeling--like it was only yester-day that fire had been lit there. And yet I knowed it had been a year and a half ago.
Well, it has always been my luck to run into things without the right kind of a lie fixed up ahead of time. They was three or four purty good stories I had been trying over in my head to tell Martha when I seen her. Any one of them stories might of done all right; but I hadn't decided WHICH one to use. And, of course, I run plumb into Martha.
She was standing by the gate, which was about twenty yards from the veranda. And all four lies popped into my head at oncet, and got so mixed up with one another there, I seen right off it was useless to try to tell anything that sounded straight. Be-sides, when you are in the fix I was in, what can you tell a girl anyhow?
So I jest says to her:
"Hullo!"
Martha, she had been fussing around some flower bushes with a pair of shears and gloves on. She looks up when I says that, and she sizes us all up standing by the gate, and her eyes pops open, and so does her mouth, and she is so surprised to see me she drops her shears.
And she looks scared, too.
"Is Miss Buckner at home?" asts Colonel Tom, lifting his hat very polite.
"Miss B-B-Buckner?" Martha stutters, very scared-like, and not taking her eyes off of me to answer him.
"Miss Hampton, Martha," I says.
"Y-y-y-es, s-sh-she is," says Martha. I wondered what was the matter with her.
It is always my luck to get left all alone with my troubles. The doctor and the colonel, they walked right past us when she said yes, and up toward the house, and left her and me standing there. Icould of went along and butted in, mebby. But Isays to myself I will have the derned thing out here and now, and know the worst. And I was so interested in my trouble and Martha that I didn't even notice if Miss Lucy met 'em at the door, and if so, how she acted. When I next looked up they was all in the house.
"Martha--" I begins. But she breaks in.
"Danny," she says, looking like she is going to cry, "don't l-l-look at me l-l-like that. If you knew ALL you wouldn't blame me. You--""Wouldn't blame you fur what?" I asts her.
"I know it's wrong of me," she says, begging-like.
"Mebby it is and mebby it ain't," I says. "But what is it?""But you never wrote to me," she says.
"You never wrote to me," I says, not wanting her to get the best of me, whatever it was she might be talking about.
"And then HE came to town!--"
"Who?" I asts her.
"Don't you know?" she says. "The man I am going to marry."When she said that I felt, all of a sudden, like when you are broke and hungry and run acrost a half dollar you had forgot about in your other pants.
I was so glad I jumped.
"Great guns!" I says.
I had never really knowed what being glad was before.
"Oh, Danny, Danny," she says, putting her hands in front of her face, "and here you have come to claim me for your bride!"Which showed me why she had looked so scared.
That there girl had went and got engaged to another feller. And had been laying awake nights suffering fur fear I would turn up agin. And now I had.
Looey, he always said never to trust a woman!
"Martha," I says, "you ain't acted right with me.""Oh, Danny, Danny," she says, "I know it! I know it!"
"Some fellers in my place," I says, "would raise a dickens of a row.""I DID love you once," she says, looking at me from between her fingers.
"Yes," says I, acting real melancholy, "you did.
And now you've quit it, they don't seem to me to be nothing left to live fur." Martha, she was an awful romanceful girl. I got the notion that mebby she was enjoying her own remorsefulness a little bit.
I fetched a deep sigh and I says:
"Some fellers would kill theirselves on the spot!""Oh!--Oh!--Oh!--" says Martha.
"But, Martha," says I, "I ain't that mean. Iain't going to do that."
That dern girl ackshellay give me a disappointed look! If anything, she was jest a bit TOO romanceful, Martha was.
