Nancy came toward him with her iron held at arms' length before her. “What do you want?” she demanded fiercely. “Give me to drink,” he said, with a grin. “Go round to the well,” she answered. The man bent his body a little forward, and looked in, but he did not venture to lift his other foot to the threshold. “Where is your husband?” he asked. “I have no husband. What is it to you?” “'Thou sayest well ... for him whom thou now hast, is not thy husband.' You don't look a bit older, and you're as handsome as ever, Nancy. I suppose that's his,” he said, turning his eye towards the little one on the floor, lifted by her hands half upright, and peering at him, in conditional alarm. “It's mine,” she retorted. “Oh, anybody could see that. It's the image of you. And so is our Joey. You don't let your young ones favor your husbands much, Nancy; and yet you was not always so set against me. What's your notion letting Joey come to the Temple?” “To see for himself what you are.” “That's what I thought, maybe. Well, he don't seem to take to me much, if I can judge from his face when he looks my way. I hain't been able to give him all the attention I may later. But you needn't be troubled about him. I won't do anything to make you anxious. Nancy, I wish you could feel as friendly to me as I do to you. Will you let me have something to drink out of?” “Go round,” she said, “and I'll bring the gourd to you.” Dylks laughed, but he obeyed, and found his way to the well where he lowered the bucket at the end of the swoop, and stood waiting for Nancy to follow him with the dipper fashioned from a long-necked gourd, as the drinking cup oftenest was in the western country of those days. She held it out to him with her head turned and he carried it to his lips from the brimming bucket. He drank it empty, and then turned it over with a long, deep “Ah--h--h!” of satisfaction. “That was good! Good as the buttermilk would have been that you didn't think to offer me. Well, I thank you for the water, anyway, you woman of Samaria.” He held the gourd toward her but she did not take it, and he laughed again. “If you could have had your way without sin you'd have made it poison, I reckon. Don't you know I could drink poison the same as water?” “_You_ don't,” she said, and as he swung the gourd in tacit question what to do with it since she did not offer to take it, she bade him, “Put it down.” He did so, and she set her foot on the thin bowl and crushed it like an egg shell. He laughed. “Is that the way you feel about me, Nancy? Pity for the gourd, but don't you believe that if I was to will it so, it would come good and whole again?” “_You_ don't believe it,” she said. “It's not for me to believe or to unbelieve,” he answered. “I am that I am.” “Oh, yes,” she taunted him, “you've tried saying such things, and you're not afraid because it ha'n't killed you yet. You think if you _was_ just a man it would kill you.”