"You don't want to go nowhere," said the woman. "It is about to rain."

I took another drink and it didn't taste half bad. It tasted better than the first one had and it stoked up the fire.

"You'd best sit down, Mr. Smith," the woman said. "I'm about to take up the victuals. Paw, you hand him down a plate and cup…" "But I…"

"Shucks," said the man, "you won't refuse to eat with us, now will you? The old woman has cooked up a mess of hog jowls with some greens and they'll be licking good. There ain't no one in the world can cook up better hog jowls. I been sitting here fair drooling for them to be done." He looked at me speculatively. "I'll bet you never yet have sunk a tooth into real hog jowls. They ain't city food."

"You'd be wrong," I told him. "I have eaten them, many years ago." To tell the truth, I was hungry and hog jowls sounded fine.

"Go ahead," he said, "and finish up the glass. It will curl your toes."

I finished up the drink and he reached up on the shelf and took down a cup and plate and got a knife and fork and spoon out of a drawer in the table and set a place for me. The woman brought the food and put it on the table.

"Now, mister," she said, "you just draw up a chair to the place that's set for you. And, Paw, you take that pipe out of your mouth." She said to me, "It's bad enough he wears that hat all the time—he even sleeps in it—but I will not stand him sitting at the table and trying to fork his victuals in around that pipe."

She settled down into her chair. "You just pitch in and help yourself," she told me. "It ain't no fancy eating, but it's clean and there is plenty of it and I hope you like it."

It was very tasty and satisfactorily filling and there did seem plenty of it; almost as if, I thought, they had expected, all along, that an extra person would drop in for supper.