Old Porter rose with evident reluctance. “All right,” he said. “I'll see ef I kin find 'er--ef I do it will be the fust time I ever run across her, or any other woman, when she was needed.” He returned in a moment “She'll be out in a few minutes,” he said. “She told me to tell you to set down here on the porch.” Hillhouse took a vacant seat, holding his hat daintily on his sharp knees, and Porter resumed his chair, tilting it backward as he talked. “Ef you are ever unlucky enough to git married, parson,” he said, “you'll know more about women than you do now, an' at the same time you'll swear you know less. They say the Maker of us all has unlimited knowledge, but I'll be blamed ef I believe He could understand women--even ef he _did_ create 'em. I'm done with the whole lot!” Porter waved his hand, as if brushing aside something of an objectionable nature. “They never do a thing that has common-sense in it. I believe they are plumb crazy when it comes to tacklin' anything reasonable. I'll give you a sample. Fer the last ten years I have noticed round about here, that whenever a man died the women folks he left sent straight to town an' bought a high-priced coffin to lay 'im away in. No matter whether the skunk had left a dollar to his name or not, that Jew undertaker over thar at Darley, to satisfy family pride, sent out a coffin an' trimmin's to the amount of an even hundred dollars. I've knowed widows an' orphans to stint an' starve an' go half naked fer ten years to pay off a debt like that. Now, as I'm financially shaped, I won't leave but powerful little, an' that one thing worried me considerable. Now an' then I'd sorter spring the subject on my women, an' I found out that they thought a big splurge like that was the only decent way to act over a man's remains. Think o' the plumb foolishness, parson, o' layin' a man away on a silk-plush cushion after he's dead, when he's slept all his life on a common tick stuffed with corn-shucks with the stubs on 'em. But that's _women!_ Well, I set to work to try to beat 'em at the game, as fur as _I_ was concerned. I 'lowed ef I made my preparations myself ahead o' time, with the clear understandin' that I wanted it that away, why, that no reasonable person would, or could, raise objections.” “Oh, I see!” Hillhouse said, his mind evidently on something else. “Well, you may see--an' any other reasonable _man_ could--but you don't see what them women done.