“Here you are forty years old, and that’s old enough for you to have some sense if you’re goin’ to have any. And I must say I don’t think you nor Big McTavish nor any of you Bushwhackers have an ounce of sense among you. Here you are fightin’ off a fortune, or at least keepin’ money, which you might have, out of your pockets. Bosh! I believe that Boy McTavish has got you all under a spell.”
“Boy is sure the strongest and bitterest fighter amongst us,” agreed Bill, “but we’re all of one opinion. We like the woods, and I guess we have reason to. It has give us all a mighty good livin’, and somehow wood-life has somethin’ about it that cleared land ain’t got—smells and sounds and silence and I’ll be——”
“Be careful now, you nigh swore again,” admonished the woman. “There you, Tom, set the pail down on the table; then go to the out-house and bring in the bread, the brick-baked loaf.”
“Mrs. Ross,” said Paisley, “you’re not only a good-lookin’ woman, but you’re a good-hearted woman. Once I hoped I might be your son-in-law and have all the brick-baked bread I wanted, and the corncake which only you can bake. But Mary Ann she seems to think different, and I’m thinkin’, after all, she had some reason, seein’ she is only somethin’ about twenty-two years old and me nearly twice that.”
The widow put her finger on her lip and glanced fearfully toward the door. Then she looked with commiseration at Paisley, and approaching him in a crouching attitude, whispered:
“Mary Ann is goin’ to marry the teacher.”
Bill’s stool, poised on two legs, came to the floor with a thump.
“Marry the teacher!” he repeated; “marry the teacher! Well now, I’ll be turkey-trapped. I didn’t think he was brave enough to ask her.”
“I ain’t sayin’ that he has asked her, am I?” cried the widow. “But I’ve got two eyes to see with, haven’t I, Bill Paisley?”
“Aye, marm, to do whatever you like with,” answered Bill pleasantly, his own eyes on the loaf of bread which Tom had just brought in. Then noting the widow’s ruffled dignity, he smoothed it with: “I’d know who baked that bread by the appetizin’ smell of it. Says I to Big McTavish just yesterday, ‘There are some good bread-makers in this here place, but none of ’em quite like widder Ross.’ ”