§ 302 Belated but Sincere
The funeral was over. The elderly widower, having returned from the cemetery, sat on the front porch of his small New Hampshire cottage whistling to himself. A neighbor passed, and saw the solitary figure in the shadow of the porch, and halted his team.
“Well, Uncle Gil,” he said, striving to put sympathy into his tones, “how air you bearin’ up?”
“Fust-rate, Eph,” said the supposedly bereaved one, cheerfully. “Dun’t know ez I ever felt better.”
“I thought mebbe you’d be missin’ her,” said the neighbor. “She was a good wife—tuck keer of your home and raised your children and always done mighty well by you durin’ all the thutty years you lived together.”
“Yas; I know that,” stated the widower. “She done all them things and I lived with her thutty years, jest ez you was sayin’. But, gol-dern her, I never did like her!”