"Hit does--but women folks is quair, Dunaway. Some of 'em will take any sort and amount of abuse and say nothin', and some even won't take a joke, no, sir. Hit's jest the way they're made. When I lived in Bourbon, I knowed a man, Colonel Keys,--the butterest kind o' man in company you ever seed; nobody wouldn't 'a' thought he wuz anytheng but purty behaved in his fambly: but he wuz jest as rough thar as a hackle. His wife, though, ef she ever said a word to lead folks to thenk he wuz anytheng but plumb sugar to her, hit's yit to be heerd, and she's been dead feefteen year. He got mad at her one day, and when she had her back turned, he keecked her down the cellar steps, and the fall, hit broke her false teeth, and she swallered 'em and never lived the year out, no, sir! "You've heerd me talk about Lawyer Willie Wall over in Bourbon, hain't you, Mr. Lindsay? Willie, he always said her bein' a woman that wouldn't take a joke wuz what parted him and his wife. Willie, he killed some rats, he'd caught in a cage rat-trap,--about a dozen, and skinned and cleaned 'em right nice, and tuck 'em, and told his wife, they wuz young squirrels, yes, sir! She fried 'em and they looked the nicest you ever seed on the table. Willie, he wouldn't eat nary un, said he wuzn't feelin' well, but she et one and a half, and then he told her what they wuz! They wuz some that didn't blame her fer leavin' him, no, sir, but he said he thought all women ought to be willin' to be joked now and then! Women is cur'is, I tell you, Dunaway." "I wish," remarked Mr. Lindsay, who had paid but careless heed to Mr. Doggett's recital, "somebody'd tell me how in the name o' sense Brock got a holt o' her letter when I laid hit between the leaves o' my Bible, and put the Book in the bottom of my trunk Sunday evenin' before I left?" Dunaway shook his head. Mr. Doggett looked uneasy. "Are you plumb shore you put hit thar, Mr. Lindsay? Hit might be you drapped hit out'n your pocket a climbin' the fence, yes, sir, hit might." "I laid that letter in the Book of John, in the New Testament part of my Bible," emphasized Mr. Lindsay, with some impatience. "Who knowed I had the letter, besides you and Dock, anyway, Dunaway?" Dunaway, seated on the stump of the felled sycamore (he never stood when he could sit) batted his eye in a wink that suggested many things. "A body ortn't to be too certain o' nothin', Mr. Lindsay, whar his mem'ry is the only proof he's got--a feller is so liable to fergit," Mr. Doggett hastened to say. "Now I knowed a young doctor over in Bourbon that went back to his old boardin'-place the next day after he married, and his bride wuz a settin' in her Ma's house whar they wuz goin' to live, wonderin' why he didn't come home to supper. He forgot he wuz married!"