He got up, looking so near like a tree that's had its roots hacked at that I 'most could have told him that I didn't mean the kind of death he was thinking of at all. But I didn't say anything more. And he thanked me, humble and grateful and scared, and went off downtown. He looked over to the cottage, though, when he shut my gate--I noticed that. She wasn't anywhere in sight. Nor she wasn't when I stepped up onto her porch in a minute or two with a cup-plate of my new quince jell that I wanted her to try. "Hello," I says in the passage. "Anybody home?" There was a little shuffle and she came out of the dining-room. There was a mark all acrost her cheek, and I judged she'd been lying on the couch out there crying. "Get a teaspoon," says I, "and come taste my new receipt." She came, lack-luster, and like jell didn't make much more difference than anything else. We sat down, cozy, in the hammock, me acting like I'd forgot everything in the world about what had gone before. I rattled on about the new way to make my jell and then I set the sample on the sill behind the shutter and I says: "I just had Mr. Groom come over to fix the latch on my closet-door. I dunno what was wrong with it--when I shut it tight it went off like a gun in the middle of the night. Mr. Groom fixed it in just a minute." "Oh, he did," says she, about like that. "He's awful handy with tools," I says. And she didn't say anything. And then says I: "Mrs. Bride, we're old friends by now, ain't we?" "Why, yes," says she, "and good friends, I hope." "That's what I hope," I says. "And now," I went on, "I hope you won't think I'm interfering too much, but I want to speak to you serious about your husband." "My husband?" says she, short. I went on, never noticing. "I don't know whether you've took it in, but there seems to be something wrong with him." "What do you mean?" she says, looking at me. "Well, sir," I says, "I ain't sure. I can't tell just how wrong it is. But something is ailing him." "Why, I haven't noticed anything," she says, and come over to a chair nearer to me. "You don't mean," I says, "that you don't notice the change there's been in him?"--I didn't say in how long--"the lines in his face and how different he acts?" "Oh, no," she says. "Why, surely not!" "Surely _yes_," says I. "It strikes me--it struck me over there to-night--that something is the matter--_serious_." "Oh, don't say that," she says. "You frighten me." "I'm sorry for that," says I. "But it's better to be frightened too soon than too late. And if anything should happen I wouldn't want to think--" "Oh!" she says, sharp, "what do you think could happen?" "--I wouldn't want to think," I went on, "that I had suspicioned and hadn't warned you." "But what can I do--" she began. "You can watch out," I says, "now that you know. Folks get careless about their near and dear--that's all. They don't notice that anything's the matter till it's too late."