"An' it's been twenty, I reckon," she pursued reminiscently, "sence yo' pa was took. Wall, wall, time does fly when you come to think of deaths, now, doesn't it? I al'ays said thar wa'nt nothin' so calculated to put cheer an' spirit into you as jest to remember the people who've dropped off an' died while you've been spared. You didn't see much of yo' pa durin' his last days, did you?" "Never after I ran away, and that was the night he brought his second wife home." "He had a hard time toward the end, but I reckon she had a harder. It wa'nt that he was a bad man at bottom, but he was soft-natured an' easy, an' what he needed was to be helt an' to be helt steady. Some men air like that--they can't stand alone a minute without beginnin' to wobble. Now as long as yo' ma lived, she kept a tight hand on yo' pa, an' he stayed straight; but jest as soon as he was left alone, he began to wobble, an' from wobblin' he took to the bottle, and from the bottle he took to that brass-headed huzzy he married. She was the death of him, Benjy; I ought to know, for I lived next do' to 'em to the day of his burial. As to that, anyway, ma'am," she added to Sally, "my humble opinion is that women have killed mo' men anyway than they've ever brought into the world. It's a po' thought, I've al'ays said, in which you can't find some comfort." "You were very kind to him, I have heard," I observed, as she paused for breath and turned toward me. "It wa'nt mo'n my duty if I was, Benjy, for yo' ma was a real good neighbour to me, an' many's the plate of buttered muffins you've brought to my do' when you wa'nt any higher than that." It was true, I admitted the fact as gracefully as I could. "My mother thought a great deal of you," I remarked. "You don't see many of her like now," she returned with a sigh, "the mo's the pity. 'Thar ain't room for two in marriage,' she used to say, 'one of 'em has got to git an' I'd rather 'twould be the other!' 'Twa'nt that way with the palaverin' yaller-headed piece that yo' pa married arterwards. She'd a sharp enough tongue, but a tongue don't do you much good with a man unless he knows you've got the backbone behind to drive it. It ain't the tongue, but the backbone that counts in marriage. At first he was mighty soft, but befo' two weeks was up he'd begun to beat her, an' I ain't got a particle of respect for a woman that's once been beaten. Men air born mean, I know, it's thar natur, an' the good Lord intended it; but, all the same, it's my belief that mighty few women come in for a downright beatin' unless they've bent thar backs to welcome it. It takes two to make a beatin' the same as a courtin', an' whar the back ain't ready, the blows air slow to fall." "I never saw her but once, and then I ran away," I remarked to fill in her pause.