wages for this,” he said.
“I guess you don’t need any wages, Mr. Minick,” the woman said. “I guess you’re pretty well fixed.”
“Oh, well, I can’t complain.” (Five hundred a year.)
“Complain! I should say not! If I was to complain it’d be different. Work all day to keep myself; and nobody to come home to at night.”
“Widow, ma’am?”
“Since I was twenty. Work, work, that’s all I’ve had. And lonesome! I suppose you don’t know what lonesome is.”
“Oh, don’t I!” slipped from him. He had dropped the bastings.