"No," says I, cheering up a little, "I am going to do something they ain't many fellers would do, Martha. I'm going to forgive you. Free and fair and open. And give you back my half of that ring, and--"Dern it! I had forgot I had lost that half of that there ring! I remembered so quick it stopped me.
"You always kept it, Danny?" she asts me, very soft-spoken, so as not to give pain to one so faithful and so noble as what I was. "Let me see it, Danny."I made like I was feeling through all my pockets fur it. But that couldn't last forever. I run out of pockets purty soon. And her face begun to show she was smelling a rat. Finally I says:
"These ain't my other clothes--it must be in them.""Danny," she says, "I believe you LOST it."
"Martha," I says, taking a chancet, "you know you lost YOUR half!"She owns up she has lost it a long while ago.
And when she lost it, she says, she knowed that was fate and that our love was omened in under an evil star. And who was she, she says, to struggle agin fate?
"Martha," I says, "I'll be honest with you.
Fate got away with my half too one day when Ididn't know they was crooks like her sticking around."Well, I seen that girl seen through me then.
Martha was awful smart sometimes. And each one was so derned tickled the other one wasn't go-ing to do any pining away we like to of fell into love all over agin. But not quite. Fur neither one would ever trust the other one agin. So we felt more comfortable with each other. You ain't never comfortable with a person you know is more honest than you be.
"But," says Martha, after a minute, "if you didn't come back to make me marry you, what does Doctor Kirby want to see Miss Hampton about?
And who was that with him?"
I had been nigh to forgetting the main thing we had all come here fur, in my gladness at getting rid of any danger of marrying Martha. But it come to me all to oncet I had been missing a lot that must be taking place inside that house. I had even missed the way they first looked when she met 'em at the door, and I wouldn't of missed that fur a lot. And I seen all to oncet what a big piece of news it will be to Martha.
"Martha," I says, "they ain't no Dr. Hartley L.
Kirby. The man known as such is David Arm-strong!"
I never seen any one so peetrified as Martha was fur a minute.
"Yes," says I, "and the other one is Miss Lucy's brother. And they are all three in there straighten-ing themselves out and finding where everybody gets off at, and why. One of these here serious times you read about. And you and me are missing it all, like a couple of gumps. How can we hear?"Martha says she don't know.
"You THINK," I told her. "We've wasted five good minutes already. I've GOT to hear the rest of it. Where would they be?"Martha guesses they will all be in the sitting room, which has got the best chairs in it.
"What is next to it? A back parlour, or a bed-room, or what?" I was thinking of how I happened to overhear Perfessor Booth and his fambly that-a-way.
Martha says they is nothing like that to be tried.
"Martha," I says, "this is serious. This here story they are thrashing out in there is the only derned sure-enough romanceful story either you or me is ever lible to run up against personal in all our lives. It would of been a good deal nicer if they had ast us in to see the wind-up of it. Fur, if it hadn't of been fur me, they never would of been reunited and rejuvenated the way they be. But some people get stingy streaks with their concerns.
You think!"
Martha, she says: "Danny, it wouldn't be honourable to listen.""Martha," I tells her, "after the way you and me went and jilted each other, what kind of senses of honour have WE got to brag about?"She remembers that the spare bedroom is right over the sitting room. The house is heated with stoves in the winter time. There is a register right through the floor of the spare bedroom and the ceiling of the sitting room. Not the kind of a register that comes from a twisted-around shaft in a house that uses furnace heat. But jest really a hole in the floor, with a cast-iron grating, to let the heat from the room below into the one above.
She says she guesses two people that wasn't so very honourable might sneak into the house the back way, and up the back stairs, and into the spare bedroom, and lay down on their stummicks on the floor, being careful to make no noise, and both see and hear through that register. Which we done it.
