Then Wilbur and his girl went away up the beach and Lucy and I sat down in a dark place, where there was some roots of old trees, the water had washed up, and after that the time, till we had to go back in the launch and they had to catch their trains, wasn’t nothing at all. It went like winking your eye. Here’s how it was. The place we were setting in was dark, like I said, and there was the roots from that old stump sticking up like arms, and there was a watery smell, and the night was like—as if you could put your hand out and feel it—so warm and soft and dark and sweet like an orange. I most cried and I most swore and I most jumped up and danced, I was so mad and happy and sad. When Wilbur come back from being alone with his girl, and she saw him coming, Lucy she says, “we got to go to the train now,” and she was most crying too, but she never knew nothing I knew, and she couldn’t be so all busted up. And then, before Wilbur and Miss Woodbury got up to where we was, she put her face up and kissed me quick and put her head up against me and she was all quivering and—Gee whizz. * * * * * Sometimes I hope I have cancer and die. I guess you know what I mean. We went in the launch across the bay to the train like that, and it was dark, too. She whispered and said it was like she and I could get out of the boat and walk on the water, and it sounded foolish, but I knew what she meant. And then quick we were right at the depot, and there was a big gang of yaps, the kind that goes to the fairs, and crowded and milling around like cattle, and how could I tell her? “It won’t be long because you’ll write and I’ll write to you.” That’s all she said. I got a chance like a hay barn afire. A swell chance I got. And maybe she would write me, down at Marietta that way, and the letter would come back, and stamped on the front of it by the U.S.A. “there ain’t any such guy,” or something like that, whatever they stamp on a letter that way. And me trying to pass myself off for a bigbug and a swell—to her, as decent a little body as God ever made. Craps amighty—a swell chance I got! And then the train come in, and she got on it, and Wilbur Wessen he come and shook hands with me, and that Miss Woodbury was nice too and bowed to me, and I at her, and the train went and I busted out and cried like a kid. Gee, I could have run after that train and made Dan Patch look like a freight train after a wreck but, socks amighty, what was the use? Did you ever see such a fool? I’ll bet you what—if I had an arm broke right now or a train had run over my foot—I wouldn’t go to no doctor at all. I’d go set down and let her hurt and hurt—that’s what I’d do. I’ll bet you what—if I hadn’t a drunk that booze I’d a never been such a boob as to go tell such a lie—that couldn’t never be made straight to a lady like her.