I don't
know as you mean to, but if you do, I warn you right now that you
need niver mintion the name of Jimmy Malone to me again, for any reason."
Dannie left the cabin abruptly.
"Now you gone and made him mad!" reproached Tilly.
During the past winter Mary had lived with other married people for
the first time, and she had imbibed some of Mrs. Dolan's philosophy.
"Whin he smells the biscuit I mane to make for breakfast, he'll get
glad again," she said, and he did.
But first he went home, and tried to learn where he stood. ~Was he
truly responsible for Jimmy's death? Yes. If he had acted like a
man, he could have saved Jimmy. He was responsible. Did he want to
marry Mary? Did he? Dannie reached empty arms to empty space, and
groaned aloud. Would she marry him? Well, now, would she? After
years of neglect and sorrow, Dannie knew that Mary had learned to
prefer him to Jimmy. But almost any man would have been preferable
to a woman, to Jimmy. Jimmy was distinctly a man's man. A jolly
good fellow, but he would not deny himself anything, no matter what
it cost his wife, and he had been very hard to live with. Dannie
admitted that. So Mary had come to prefer him to Jimmy, that was
sure; but it was not a question between him and Jimmy, now. It was
between him, and any marriageable man that Mary might fancy.
He had grown old, and gray, and wrinkled, though he was under
forty. Mary had grown round, and young, and he had never seen her
looking so beautiful.
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