“Was she a brunette?” he asked, and when I confirmed that indeed Dora had a fine dark head of hair, he muttered and looked at Joe—evidently I had confirmed some theory he held about the questioning nature of brunettes.

“If he had nine children he must have been right fond of his wife,” Joe said. Billy still looked sulky at the thought that a man’s own wife would ask him why he was still breathing.

“Fond of her!” Billy said indignantly. “If a woman asked me why I was still breathing I’d show her some fondness all right. I’d fondly whack her with a big bed slat.”

9.

Was I fond of Dora? At this distance I hardly know. There’s the fact of the nine girls, and yet I can’t recall that Dora and I ever shared what a happier man would think of as a warm embrace.

Certainly it was early on in our married life that I had ceased to breathe in her face. Or in her bedroom, either. Or in the hall that led to her bedroom. Or on the floor of the house where her bedroom was situated. Indeed, I would almost rather have had myself strangled than risk wafting a breath in Dora’s direction—and yet, somehow, despite our rather polished avoidance of one another, little girls kept coming. The first I would suspect of their arrival was when I heard a new baby squalling in the nursery.

Of course, Dora was an accomplished and efficient Philadelphia woman, quick to exploit any opportunity, but, in the matter of the little girls, I can’t help feeling that she must have exploited some that arose in total darkness, while I was drugged or drunk. I really can’t explain it otherwise.

It wasn’t easy to get a new butler in Philadelphia, I can tell you; there was fierce competition for every competent man. While we were working our way through a number of unsatisfactory applicants I was forced to develop a measure of self-reliance, at least as regards the procurement of dime novels.

I soon formed the habit of clipping downtown in my buggy to meet the early-morning train from New York. In those days dime novels were baled more or less like hay; I took to haunting the freight platforms, and the second a bale of the precious booklets dropped, I was on it. The news vendors rather resented this at first, but I was a wealthy man, and it took no more than a few gold pieces to convince them it was in their interest to let me paw through the books at once.

“Des Montaignes is like that about whores,” Billy said. I was curious as to why someone with a fine French name would be living in Greasy Corners, New Mexico, so I asked.

“Because it’s the one place where everybody is as pure a rascal as he is,” Billy said.