It was bitter hard times at the little cabin on The Edge. Doss Provine had begun actively looking for a “second,” and his courting operations sorely interfered with the making of the small crop. Nancy took the field behind the plough; but her efforts came late and availed little. There was scarcely food for their mouths; she was continually harassed by anxiety concerning Pony, who had got to running with a bad crowd in Hepzibah. And finally the thing happened which had not been since Big Turkey Track was a mountain and Nancy Card was born in that small cabin. At her wit’s end, she took Little Buck and Breezy and went away to visit a married daughter whose husband worked in a machine-shop in a valley settlement, leaving Doss Provine to stay with his kin for the time. There was plenty at her daughter’s table, and a warm welcome awaiting her and the children; besides, the man of the house had promised to find a job for her spoiled boy, and give him the masculine oversight and discipline he needed. At Hepzibah she gathered up that rather astonished young man, exerting for once the real authority that was in her, and with him set out on this formidable journey.
Just once old Jephthah went past that closed door. Just once he looked on the little front yard spilling over its rived palings with autumn blossoms. And he came home so out of joint with life, in so altogether impossible a mood, that it was fairly unsafe to mention as innocent a matter as the time of day to him. Up to now perhaps he had not known what a very large place in his life those almost daily quarrels with his old sweetheart filled. Now the restlessness which had come with the trouble over Creed Bonbright was renewed; he wandered about aimlessly, with a good word for nothing and nobody, and opined darkly that his liver was out of order.
“Aunt Nancy told me one time that she would almost be willin’ to wed you to get a chance to give you a good course of spring medicine for that thar liver,” remarked Judith casually. And then she looked up with a wan little smile, to find an expression in her uncle’s eyes that set her wondering.
Oh, dear Heaven—was it like that? Would she grieve for Creed all her life long, till she was an old, old woman? She declared it should not be so. Love would never be within her reach—within the reach of her utmost efforts—and escape her, leave her an empty husk to be blown by the wind of years to the dust pile of death. One day in this mood she broke down and talked to the Lusk girls.
“He said he’d shore come back,” she concluded hopelessly. “Well, anyhow, he named things that would be done when he come back. I call that a promise. I keep thinking he’ll come back.”
Pendrilla sat, her great china-blue eyes fixed on Judith’s tense, pale, working face, and the big tears of pure emotional enjoyment began to slip down her pink cheeks. In the glow of Judith’s splendid, fiery nature, the two pale little sisters warmed themselves like timid children at a chance hearth. As the full, vibrant voice faltered into silence, Cliantha went forward and took her favourite position on her knees beside Judith, her arms raised and slipped around the taller girl’s waist.
“Oh,” she began, with a sort of frightened assurance. “Ef my lover had gone from me thataway, and I didn’t know whar he was at, an’ couldn’t git no news to him nor from him, I know mighty well and good what I’d do.”
“What?” whispered Judith, young lioness that she was, reduced to taking counsel from this mouse, “what would you do, Clianthy?”
“I’d make me a dumb supper and call him,” asserted the Lusk girl with tremulous resolution.
“A dumb supper!” echoed Judith, and then again, on a different key, “a dumb supper. I never studied about such as that.”