Tom tittered and the woman turned her back on the two.
“Swine,” she muttered; “bushwhacker swine.”
“Where’s the teacher to-night?” asked Bill blithely.
“Him and Mary Ann——” commenced Tom.
But his mother, turning, quickly advanced upon him, and catching him by the collar with one powerful hand, administered with the other such a cuff that young Tom went spinning to his corner. The mangy cat sneaked over and crept under Paisley’s chair.
“And how is Mary Ann?” asked Bill after a time. “Ain’t seen her but once or twice for the last month. I suppose she often speaks of me, Mrs. Ross?”
“Indeed she doesn’t, then, so you needn’t flatter yourself. Mary Ann’s got no use for a Bushwhacker, let alone a worthless one who would make a joke at his own mother’s funeral. So, there.”
“If I ever made a joke at my mother’s funeral it was ’cause I was too young to know better,” said Paisley pensively. “My little ma died when I was born. I ought to be worth a whole heap, marm—I was bought at a big price.”
He picked up the cat and smoothed her crumpled fur with his big hand.
“That was nigh on to forty year ago,” he said, “and I’ve been wanderin’ about the bush ever since, exceptin’ a few years I was down in the Southern States, ranchin’ it. I picked up a lot down there, but nothin’ worth keepin’, I guess. What I was goin’ to say was, I never see a mother and her boy together without a big somethin’ I can’t name standin’ right out before me, and that somethin’ is what I’ve missed by not havin’ a mother.”