But Abner's clutch of Byers's shoulder relaxed, and he sank down to a sitting posture on the root. In the meantime Byers, overcome by a sense of this new misery added to his manifold grievances, gave way to maudlin silent tears.
“Mary Ellen--your first wife?” repeated Abner vacantly.
“Yesh!” said Byers thickly, “my first wife--shelected and picked out fer your shecond wife--by your first--like d----d conundrum. How wash I t'know?” he said, with a sudden shriek of public expostulation--“thash what I wanter know. Here I come to talk with fr'en', like man to man, unshuspecting, innoshent as chile, about my shecond wife! Fr'en' drops out, carryin' off the whiskey. Then I hear all o' suddent voice o' Mary Ellen talkin' in kitchen; then I come round softly and see Mary Ellen--my wife as useter be--standin' at fr'en's kitchen winder. Then I lights out quicker 'n lightnin' and scoots! And when I gets back home, I ups and tells my wife. And whosh fault ish't! Who shaid a man oughter tell hish wife? You! Who keepsh other mensh' first wivesh at kishen winder to frighten 'em to tell? You!”
But a change had already come over the face of Abner Langworthy. The anger, anxiety, astonishment, and vacuity that was there had vanished, and he looked up with his usual resigned acceptance of the inevitable as he said, “I reckon that's so! And seein' it's so,” with good-natured tolerance, he added, “I reckon I'll break rules for oncet and stand ye another drink.”
He stood another drink and yet another, and eventually put the doubly widowed Byers to bed in his own room. These were but details of a larger tribulation,--and yet he knew instinctively that his cup was not yet full. The further drop of bitterness came a few days later in a line from Mary Ellen: “I needn't tell you that all betwixt you and me is off, and you kin tell your old woman that her selection for a second wife for you wuz about as bad as your own first selection. Ye kin tell Mr. Byers--yer great friend whom ye never let on ye knew--that when I want another husband I shan't take the trouble to ask him to fish one out for me. It would be kind--but confusin'.”
He never heard from her again. Mr. Byers was duly notified that Mrs. Byers had commenced action for divorce in another state in which concealment of a previous divorce invalidated the marriage, but he did not respond. The two men became great friends--and assured celibates. Yet they always spoke reverently of their “wife,” with the touching prefix of “our.”