“Well, sir,” Mr. Williams declared. “I couldn’t hardly of believed it, but it certainly is her.” He shook his head solemnly at Mrs. Williams, and, gently detaching her palm-leaf fan from her hand, used it for his own benefit, as he continued: “Boys, what I’m always tellin’ ma here is that there ain’t nothin’ on earth like bein’ a widow to bring out the figger!” “You hush up!” she said, but was constrained to laugh and add, “I guess you’d be after _me_ all right if I was a widow!” “No, Carrie,” he said, “I wouldn’t be after nobody if you was a widow.” “I mean if I was anybody else’s,” Mrs. Williams explained. “Look how George says you been actin’ all morning about this one!” Mr. Fuller intervened in search of information. He was not a native, and had been a citizen of Marlow a little less than four years. “Did you say this lady was one of the Ricketts family, Mrs. Williams?” he inquired. “No. She married a Ricketts. She’s a Cope; she’s all there is left of the Copes.” “Did I understand you to say she was a widow?” “I didn’t say she was one,” Mrs. Williams replied. “She is one now, though. Her and Tom Ricketts got married ten years ago and went to live in California. He’s been dead quite some time—three-four years maybe—and she’s come back to live in the Copes’ ole house, because it belongs to her, I expect. Everybody knew she was comin’ some time this spring—everybody’d heard all about it—but none you _men_ paid any attention to it. I’ll have to let you off, Mr. Fuller. You’re a widower and ain’t lived here long, and you needn’t take what I’m sayin’ to yourself. But the rest of all you rag-tag and bob-tail aren’t goin’ to hear the last o’ this for some time! Mr. Fuller, if you want to know why they never took any interest up to this morning in Lucy Cope Ricketts’ goin’ to come back and live here again, it’s because all they ever remembered her she was kind of a peakid girl; sort of thin, and never seemed to have much complexion to speak of. You wouldn’t think it to look at her now, but that’s the way she was up to when she got married and went away. Now she’s back here, and a _widow_, not a one of ’em reckanized her till Mrs. Cal Burns come up-town and told ’em—and look how they been actin’!” “It all goes to show what I say,” said Rolfo. “She always did have kind of a sweet-lookin’ face, but I claim that there’s nothin’ in the world like being a happy widow to bring out the complexion and the——” “Listen to you!” his wife interrupted. “How you do keep out o’ jail so long _I_ certainly don’t know!” She turned to the others. “That man’s a born bigamist,” she declared. “And at that I don’t expect he’s so much worse’n the rest of you!” “You ought to leave me out along with E. J. Fuller, Mrs. Williams,” Mr. Thompson protested. “I’ve never even been married at all.” But this only served to provoke Rolfo’s fat chuckle, and the barbed comment: “It _is_ a heap cheaper at mealtimes, Bore!”