“Shucks!” scoffed the miller. “I ain’t dead yit. But what made that gun——”
He stooped and picked it up. First he looked at the twisted hammer, then he turned it around and looked into the muzzle.
“For the good land o’ liberty!” he yelled. “What’s the meanin’ of this? Who—who’s gone and stuck up this here gun bar’l this a-way? I vum! It’s ce-ment—sure’s I’m a foot high.”
“What did you want to tetch that gun for, Jabez Potter?” demanded Aunt Alvirah, easing herself into a low rocker. “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! I allus warned you ‘twould do some harm some day. That’s why I plugged it up.”
“You—you plugged it up?” gasped the miller. “Wha—what for I want to know?”
“So, if ’twas loaded, no bullet would get out and hurt anybody,” declared the little old woman promptly. “Now, you kin get mad and use bad language, Jabez Potter, if you’ve a mind to. But I’d ruther go back to the poorhouse to live than stay under this ruff with that gun all ready to shoot with.”
The miller was so thunderstruck for a moment that he could not reply. Ruth feared he might fly into a temper, for he was not a patient man. But, oddly enough, he never raged at the little old housekeeper.
“I vum!” he said at last. “Don’t that beat all? An’ ain’t it like a woman? Stickin’ up the muzzle of the gun so’s it couldn’t shoot—but would explode. Shucks!” He suddenly flung up both hands. “Can you beat ’em? You can’t!”
Now that it was all over, and the accident had not caused any fatality, the two girls felt like laughing—a hysterical feeling perhaps. They got Aunt Alvirah into the larger kitchen and left Uncle Jabez to nail up the box that he was going to ship for Ruth to Red Cross headquarters.
The girl of the Red Mill had been gathering the knitted wear and comfort kits from the neighbors around to send on to the Red Cross headquarters, and, in the immediate vicinity of the Red Mill, she knew that the women and girls were doing a better work for the cause than in Cheslow itself.