“I’d known her for some time in a kind of a way, but the first time I really met her was at a friend’s house and we sot out on the porch and talked. She was a fine figger of a woman then…some meat on her bones…and them eyes of hers was kind of devastating by moonlight. I won’t deny there was a touch of glamour about it. But I didn’t really mean to propose to her…honest, I didn’t. It wasn’t a proposal…just a kind of a hint. Partly out of sympathy and partly because of the moon. But she snapped me up so quick I was an engaged man before I knew what had happened to me. Hog-tied, that’s what I was. Well, we was married and went to live in her house. It was rather prosy for a man of my romantic temperament but we was well enough for a spell, though the boys called us the long and short of it. I was devoted to that woman, Judy. (Snort.) Many a time I’ve got up in the middle of the night and made a cup of tea for her. She always liked a cup of tea when she got up in the night. Claimed it was good for her heart. And she was the best wife in the world except for a few things. She sighed too much and she used to get hopping mad if I hung my cap on the wrong hook. Likewise she had an edge to her tongue if I went in without scraping my boots. I ain’t denying we had a few surface quarrels but no more than enough to spice life up a bit. It was her theology we went to the mat about finally. I couldn’t stomach it and I told her so. She was a fundamentalist…oh, was she a fundamentalist? I was one myself but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of admitting it, and anyhow I stopped short at predestination. As for my saying there was no Adam or Eve I was only talking poetically out when I saw how she got her dander up over it I pretended to be in earnest. From that on there was no living with her and when she up and told me to go I went as quick as I could get. I was tired of her lumpy gravy anyhow, and the dishwater she called soup. If she’d been a cook like you, Judy, I could have believed in anything.”

Tillytuck rumbled and took a large bite out of a cinnamon bun.

“Life would be dull if we hadn’t a few traggedies to look back on,” he said philosophically.

But three days later the world of Silver Bush temporarily toppled into chaos. Tillytuck had given warning.