“You’ve been trying to swim in a puddle of molasses, you poor devil,” he muttered as young Mayo came shuffling across the room. The faded glories of his worn clothing were eloquent of what had happened in his fortunes. His coat was ripped in the arm seam, the cuffs were frayed, but he wore his big puff tie of baby blue, and the pungent effluvia of the stable was toned down by cheap perfume that surrounded him like impalpable fog. “That smell’s thick enough to cut,” murmured old Amazeen to Uncle Buck, fingers squeezing his nostrils. The woe-begone visage of the client stirred spasms of silent mirth in the old men. “Well, Wat, how’s the bride?” inquired Squire Phin, with heartiness. “And there wasn’t any hurry about your paying me that two dollars, if that’s what you’re come in for.” “I ain’t come to pay you no two dollars,” returned the youth, gloomily. “First place, I ain’t got it; second place, it ain’t as I expected it was goin’ to be.” A subdued “tchock” sounded in the nose of Amazeen. “Let’s see. You’re speaking now of your marriage and not of your job, as I understand it,” suggested the Squire, relighting his pipe; “though--ump-foo--ump-foo--I should say you’d better save such talk for the job.” “Well, I’m sort of speakin’ of the two together,” stammered the young man. “I reckon you’d better begin to dissociate your wife from the livery stable, Watson,” drily advised the Squire, “even though you did start housekeeping there. Now, you’ll remember that you came to me bringing the prettiest girl I ever saw, and you told me that it wouldn’t be worth while for you to try to live if you didn’t have her. You don’t mean to come here now, do you, and tell me that you don’t love her?” “’Tain’t that,” he blurted; “oh, ’tain’t that, Squire. It’s because I love her so much and--and--well, somehow it’s all going wrong and I’m afraid she don’t love me. It has kind of taken the gimp out o’ me. I didn’t think dad and ma would stand out so long--and _she_ didn’t, either, and I ain’t got no trade so I can hold down some good job, and she ain’t satisfied with me. No, she ain’t, Squire. If dad and ma would only take me home--if you would see ’em and fix it and----” “Look here, Watson.” Look threw himself forward and drove his fists on the table with an emphasis that started the dust. “That’s why I married you off, you fool, to get you out of leading-strings, to make a man of you, instead of a puppy, loafing around our streets and chasing home to your mother’s doughnut jar three times a day. Even old Eli, here, knows how to carry home a bone for _himself_, but you hadn’t even done that for _yourself_ up to the time you were married. And I gave you something you wanted, something to work for, something that every man needs to make a true man of himself, except when he’s a tough old bach like me. Now what are you whining about?”