For Judith Barrier at once all the light was gone out of the spring morning. The bird in the Rose of Sharon bush that she had taken for a thrush—why, the thing cawed like a crow. She could have struck her visitor. And then, with an uncertain impulse of gratitude, she was glad to be told anything about Creed, to be informed that others knew his hair was yellow and curly.
“Gone?” sounded old Jephthah’s deep tones from within, as Mrs. Jim Cal made her reluctant way back to a sick husband and a house full of work and babies. “Lord, to think of a woman havin’ the keen tongue that Iley’s got, and her husband keepin’ fat on it!”
“Uncle Jep,” inquired Judith abruptly, “did you know Creed Bonbright was at Nancy Card’s—stayin’ there, I mean?”
“No,” returned the old man, seeing in this a chance to call at the cabin, where, beneath the reception that might have been offered an interloper, even a duller wit than his might have divined a secret cordial welcome. “I reckon I better find time to step over that way an’ ax is there anything I can do to he’p ’em out.”
“I wish ’t you would,” assented Judith so heartily that he turned and regarded her with surprise. “An’ ef you see Huldy over yon tell her she’s needed at home. Jim Cal’s sick, and Iley can’t no-way git along without her.”
“I reckon James Calhoun Turrentine ain’t got nothin’ worse ’n the old complaint that sends a feller fishin’ when the days gits warm,” opined Jim Cal’s father. “I named that boy after the finest man that ever walked God’s green earth—an’ then the fool had to go and git fat on me! To think of me with a fat son! I allers did hold that a fat woman was bad enough, but a fat man ort p’intedly to be led out an’ killed.”
“Jude, whar’s my knife,” came the call from the window in a masculine voice. “Pitch it out here, can’t you?”
Judith took the pocket-knife from the mantel, and going to the window tossed it to her cousin Wade Turrentine, who was shaping an axe helve at the chip pile.
“Do you know whar Huldy’s gone?” she inquired, setting her elbows on the sill and staring down at the young fellow accusingly.
“Nope—an’ don’t care neither,” said Wade, contentedly returning to his whittling. He was expecting to marry Huldah Spiller, Iley’s younger sister, within a few months, and the reply was thus conventional.