"Oh, I knowed what I was doin'," she said one night, sitting near the hot stove in Milford's dining-room. "You can't fool me. I know lots, I tell you. Do you know the Bunker girl? Well, she was at my house yesterday, and she talked like she knowed you but wanted to know you better. Now put down that newspaper and talk to me. Do you know her?" "I think I've met her," said Milford. "You think you have. Well, a woman has taken mighty little hold of a man when he thinks he's met her. She'd make you a good wife; yes, you bet!" "I don't want a wife, good or bad." "Oh, you keep still. What the deuce are you workin' for? You know there's a woman somewhere waitin' for you." "And if there is, why should I want to marry the Bunker girl?" "Now listen at him! Why, I didn't know but you'd got tired of foolin' with the other one. Who is she? That tall critter that was out here? Well, I don't know about her, with her art. Art the cat's foot! You'd better marry a woman that knows how to do housework. She may be all right for summer, but you'd better marry a woman for winter. Don't you think so, Bob?" "For winter and summer, I should think," said the hired man. "But I married one for winter, and she went away along in July. But I guess I could get her again." "And he's just about fool enough to take her," Milford spoke up. "Why, she'd run away again." "I don't think that, Bill. I guess she's got more sense now." "At any rate, she's got more sense than you," said the old woman. "She had sense enough to run away and you didn't. But I hear that somebody else run away, Bill. I heard that you left a wife out West." "You heard a lie, madam," Milford replied. "But that's not hard to hear. A man may be ever so deaf, and sometimes might hear a lie." "That's gospel, Mrs. Stuvic," said the hired man. "I was out at the deaf and dumb asylum one time, and they had a boy shut up for lyin' with his fingers." "Well, what do you come tellin' me about it for? Do you s'pose I care? I wasn't talkin' about lyin'. I was talkin' about some folks not havin' much sense, and you was right at the top of the pot, I'll tell you that. You haven't got sense enough to catch a good woman." "I might not have from your standpoint, but I have from mine. I don't believe I'd want the woman you'd call good. She'd think it was her duty to keep a man stirred up all the time; she'd make him work himself to death." "Well," she snapped, "a woman's better off every time she makes a man work himself to death, I'll tell you that." "Yes, from your standpoint," drawled the hired man, opening the stove door to get a light for his pipe. "But I wouldn't kill myself for no woman, would you, Bill?"