Now that happened to me with my Will. I come so clost to losing the only man a woman like me could ever hope to get a-holt of, and a good man to boot, that I can still feel the danger whistling past me like a rattlesnake striking and just missing. And that’s it. Time ain’t got the decency of a rattlesnake. A rattler most times’ll give warning. I almost lost my Will, and me a big fat somebody no man’d look at twicet lessen he was used to me. I almost lost him on account of I had changed and didn’t know it, and time never give me the first sign to warn me. Merciful jay bird! No, sir, time’s a low-down, sneaking, cottonmouth moccasin, drops its fangs without you knowing it’s even in the grass, and was there ary thing I could do about it, I’d do it. Excusing that, I got nothing against time.

My Will married me—some say I married him—when I was a big feather-bolster kind of a gal, pink-cheeked and laughing and easy-going and heavy-eating. I will say, I always did have a tongue in my head, and loved to use it, just like a man with a keen knife loves to keep it sharp. But I used it fair and open. Some said I was lucky to get Will Dover, and some said he was lucky to get me. Will and me was both satisfied. I’d had men was more to look at, come courting me out at Pa’s place in the flat-woods, and I’d had men come was nothing but breath and breeches. Will had a gold tooth in the front of his mouth, and I always was a fool for a gold tooth. I takened to the little feller first time I seed him. I was a heap bigger’n him even then.

Third time he come out of a Sunday evening, Pa tipped back in his chair on the porch and said to Will, “Better look out, young feller, Quincey don’t take you for a play-dolly.”

Will looked him square in the eye.

“You ever tried to hold a hawk in your bare hand?” Will said.

“Why, no,” Pa said, “I’d know better.”

“Well, a hawk’s a heap littler’n you, ain’t he? But ’taint his size or your size makes you leave him be. It’s his nature. Now the gal ain’t growed so big in these flat-woods, could take me for a play-dolly. I ain’t got the size to hold Quincey, here, on my lap. But she shore as hell ain’t going to hold me on hers.”

Pa laughed and slapped hisself.

“Will Dover,” he said, “if you want her and she don’t take you, I’ll lick her with my own hands.”

“Ain’t nobody going to lick Quincey but me,” Will said, “and I aim just to reason with her.”

“Ain’t he something?” Pa said to me. “Quincey, I’ve always told you, you can’t judge no man by the length of his suspenders. You got to judge him by the spirit in him.”