Part 48 (1/2)
”Being wet through at this rate?”
”Don't signify whether a man's killed one way or another,” was the somewhat unhopeful answer. ”Come to the same thing in the long run, I expect.”
”Might as well make as long a run as you can of it. Why don't you wear some sort of an overcoat?”
”I keep it -- same way you do yourn. -- No use to spoil a thing for nothing. There's no good of an overcoat but to hold so much heft of water, and a man goes lighter without it. As long as you've got to be soaked through, what's the odds?”
”I didn't lay my account with this sort of thing when I set out,” said Winthrop.
”O _I_ did. I have it about a third of the time, I guess. This and March is the plaguiest months in the hull year. They do use up a man.”
Some thread of a.s.sociation brought his little sister's open book and pointed finger on the sudden before Winthrop, and for a moment he was silent.
”Yours is rather bad business this time of year,” he remarked.
”Like all other business,” said the man; ”aint much choice.
There's a wet and a dry to most things. What's yourn? if I may ask.”
”Wet,” said Winthrop.
”How? --” said the man.
”You need only look at me to see,” said Winthrop.
”Well -- I thought --” said his companion, looking at him again -- ”Be you a dominie?”
”No.”
”Going to be? -- Hum! -- Get ap! --” said the driver touching up one of his horses.
”What makes you think so?” said Winthrop.
”Can't tell -- took a notion. I can mostly tell folks, whether they are one thing or another.”
”But you are wrong about me,” said Winthrop; ”I am neither one thing nor the other.”
”I'll be shot if you aint, then,” said his friend after taking another look at him. ”Ben't you? -- You're either a dominie or a lawyer -- one of the six.”
”I should like to know what you judge from. Are clergymen and lawyers so much alike?”
”I guess I aint fur wrong,” said the man, with again a glance, a very benign one, of curiosity. ”I should say, your eye was a lawyer and your mouth a clergyman.”
”You can't tell what a man is when he is as wet as I am,” said Winthrop.
”Can't tell what he's goin' to be, nother. Well, if the rain don't stop, we will, that's one thing.”
The rain did not stop; and though the coach did, it was not till evening had set in. And that was too late. The wet and cold had wrought for more days than one; they brought on disease from which even Winthrop's strong frame and spirit could not immediately free him. He lay miserably ill all the next day and the next night, and yet another twelve hours; and then finding that his dues paid would leave him but one dollar unbroken, Winthrop dragged himself as he might out of bed and got into the stage-coach for Mannahatta which set off that same evening.
CHAPTER XVI.