"I don't know as to that," Willock said. "I sorter doubts if Lahoma
will ever care for dugouts again, except as she stays on the outside
of 'em, and gets to romancing. A mouthful of real ice-cream spoils
your taste everlasting for frozen starch and raw eggs."

"Lahoma is a real person," declared Bill, "and a dugout is grounded
and bedded in a real thing--this very solid and very real old earth,
if you ask to know what I mean."

"Lord, _I_ knows what you mean," retorted Willock. "You've lived
in a hole in the ground most of your life, and are pretty near ripe
to be laid away in another one, smaller I grant you, but dark and
deep, according. We'll never get Lahoma back the same as when we
let her flutter forth hunting a green twig over the face of the
waters. She may bring back the first few leaves she finds, but a
time's going to come...." He broke off abruptly, his eyes wide and
troubled, as if already viewing the dismal prospect.

"Maybe I AM old," Bill grudgingly conceded, "but I don't set up to
be no Noah's ark."

"Oh," cried Willock, his sudden sense of future loss causing him to
speak with unwonted irony, "maybe you're just a Shem, or Ham or that
other kind of Fat-- What's the matter, Wilfred? Can't you let go
of that letter?"

"I've made out the name of that widower who's paying court to my
old sweetheart," he said, "but it's one I never heard of before;
that's why it looked so strange--it's Gledware."