And I didn't have any good answer to that, 'cause I do know more about seaweed than I do cucumbers, and the farm wasn't payin' and I knew it.
"If he'd said these things right out plain, I guess likely I'd have give him what he deserved.

But he didn't; he just hinted and smiled and acted superior and pityin'.

And if I got mad and hove out a little sailor talk by accident, he'd look as sorry and shocked as the Come-Outer parson does when there's a baby born to a Universalist family.

He'd get up and shut the door, as if he was scart the neighbors' morals would suffer--though the only neighbor within hearin' was an old critter that used to run a billiard saloon in Gloucester, and HIS morals had been put out of their misery forty years afore--and he'd suggest that Emeline better leave the room, maybe.

And then I'd feel ashamed and wouldn't know what to do, and 'twould end, more'n likely, by my leavin' it myself.
"You can see how matters was driftin'.