"Yes," she said, "tell him that love is the greatest estate. It will make him think, coming from a man. Poor George was in the hardware business, and he failed not long ago, and I don't know why, for I'm sure I saved every cent I could. What you tell him will have a good deal of weight." Milford had to laugh at this. "I don't know why," said he. "Because you are a good man." Milford sneered. "Madam, I'm a crank." He begged her pardon for his harshness. Her forgiveness came with a smile. He told her that he was as morbid as a mad dog, and he said it with such energy that she drew back from him. "But you won't fail to see George, will you? Come on, Bobbie. Oh, I forgot to tell you of some new arrivals--a Mrs. Goodwin, wife of a well-known doctor in town, and her companion, one of the handsomest young women I ever saw--a Norwegian girl, as graceful as one of her native pines. You won't fail to come, will you? Good-bye." The evening was sultry, with a lingering smear of red in the western sky. At the supper table Milford nodded in his chair. The hired man spoke to him, and he looked up, his batting eyes fighting off sleep. "Them slashes have about got the best of you, haven't they, Bill? I'd let that corn go before I'd dig my life out among them tough clods. I'm givin' it to you straight." "I don't doubt it. But it will pay in the end. I've come to the conclusion that all hard work pays. It pays a man's mind, and he couldn't get a much better reward. But I'd like to go to bed, just the same." "Why don't you? Not goin' to dig any more to-night, are you?" "No, but I've got to go over to Mrs. Stuvic's to see a man." "A man?" Mitchell asked, with a wink. "I said a man." "Yes, I know you said a man." "Then why not a man?" "Well, I don't know, only it seems to me that if I was as tired as you look I wouldn't go to see no man's man." "How about any woman's woman?" "Well, that's different. You can put off seein' a man, and you might put off seein' a woman, but you don't want to. But maybe you ain't as big a chump about a woman as I am." Milford said that the wisest man among wise men could easily be a fool among women. Solomon's wisdom, diluted by woman, became a weak quality. "Except once," he added, taking down his pipe from the clock shelf, "and that was when he called for a sword to cut a child in two to divide it between two mothers; but if the question had been between himself and a woman, I don't know but he'd have got the worst of it."