"I do despise to cook for them peckish people, that looks as if they was choking down every mouthful. We're all hearty eaters here; even Uncle treats his vittles like he enjoyed 'em."
The old man at the end of the table looked up. "You're a powerful good cook, Mary. I ain't never sat down to a meal at your table that didn't hit the mark."
He was a very old man, small and withered, with a wrinkled brown face and kind blue eyes that peered like the wildflowers from the dead leaves. His meal was a bowl of oatmeal, covered with yellow cream, and a special kind of brown bread on a blue willow plate. His defense of his niece's cooking was his only part in the conversation, but he filled the room with the sense of his presence. Like spring warmth from the frozen earth, peace radiated from him. When he had finished his cereal and cream he left the room.
Mary Morrison looked after him.
"He's the best man that ever lived. I've ate and slept in the same house with him for almost fifty years and I ain't never seen him cross or heard him say an unkind thing."
"He ain't got nothin' to cross him, ma; not that I'm saying he ain't good."
"There's always things to cross folks, when they're the crossin' kind. I never seen any one yet that couldn't git crossed, give 'em half a chance. Sometimes you shame me, Mattie, with that shaller talk."
The girl began scraping the plates without answering. Mrs. Morrison went on to Jean.
"Mattie here's the kind that no chip gets by, but life'll learn her. I kin remember when Uncle had things to upset anybody when he was younger, but he never let 'em. He'd just go off and read the Book a spell and come back among folks smilin'. Why, he's read the Bible clear through most two hundred times, and there's a stack of Christian Heralds out in the barn that reaches to the second loft. He don't read nothin' else and he reads 'em all the time."
Mattie carried off the scraped plates, and her mother gathered up the knives and forks. With the touch of the dirty dishes, she came back to her everyday manner.