"I don't know what you 're talking about, George," he said. "What is it you think you know?"
"I think I know all about it," said Rapp laughingly. "Come into the office. What a man in the livery stable don't hear ain't worth finding out. I know your wife come back to you at the shanty-boat, Peter, when she was sick and played out and hadn't nowhere else to go, and I know you took her in and got a doctor for her, and I know she brought along her boy, which you say ain't your son. And I know you sold me your boat so you could take her down river and bury her decent, just as if she hadn't ever run off from you--"
"Who said she was my wife? Who said she run off from me?" asked Peter. "You tell me that, George!"
"Why, Widow Potter said so," said Rapp. "Everybody knows about it. There was a piece in the paper about it. The Doc you had up there told it all around town, I guess. And Widow Potter is so interested she can't sit still. She's just naturally bothering the life out of me. She says she's buying a horse from me, but that's all gee whiz. Anyway, she's dropped in to look at a colt near every day lately, and sort of enquires if you've been up to town. She says she can understand a lot of things she couldn't before. She says she can forgive you a lot of things, now she knows what kind of a wife you had. She says it's some excuse for being shiftless. She's anxious to see you, Peter."
"She ain't in town now, is she?" asked Peter nervously. "You didn't tell her I was likely to stop in here?"
"I just naturally had to tell her something," Rapp said. "She's plumb crazy. She says she's willing to let by-gones be by-gones; that it's all as plain as day to her now."
"Why, all," said Rapp. "Everything. The whole business. Why you didn't marry her long ago, I reckon. She didn't say so in that many words, but she spoke about how curious it was a man could hang around a woman year in and year out, and saw three times as much wood for her as need be, and take any sort of tongue lashing as meek as Moses, and _look_ kind of marriage-like, and not do it. She said a woman couldn't understand that sort of thing, but it was easy to understand when she knew you had a wife somewhere. She said she's sorry for your loss, and she'd like you to come right up and see her."