Aunt Naomi was not proof against this parade of indifference, and in a moment she broke out with her story.
"Well," she declared, "Tom Webbe seems bound to be talked about."
"Tom Webbe!" I echoed. "What is it now?"
I confess my heart sank with the fear that he had become desperate with the pressure of weary days, and had somehow defied all the narrow conventionalities which hem him in here in this little town.
"It's the Brownrig woman," Aunt Naomi announced. "If you get mixed up with that sort of creatures there's no knowing what you'll come to."
"But what about her?" I demanded so eagerly that I became suddenly conscious of the keen curiosity which my manner brought into her glance. "What has she been doing?" I went on, trying to be cool.
It was only by much questioning that I got the story. Had it not been for my real interest in Tom I would not have bothered so much, but as it was she had me at her mercy, and knew it. What happened, so far as I can make out, is this: The Brownrig woman has been worse than ever since Julia's death. She has been drunk in the streets more than once, and I am afraid the help she has had from Tom and others has only led her to greater excesses. Once Deacon Richards came upon her lying in the ditch beside the road, and she has made trouble more than once, besides disturbing the prayer-meeting.
Last evening Tom came upon a mob of men and boys down by the Flatiron Wharf, and in the midst of them was Mrs. Brownrig, singing and howling. They were baiting her, and saying things to provoke her to more outrageous profanity.
"They do say," observed Aunt Naomi with what seemed to me, I am ashamed to say, an unholy relish, "her swearing was something awful. John Deland told me he never heard anything like it. He said no man could begin to come up to it."
"John Deland, that owns the smoke-houses?" I put in. "What was he doing there? I always thought he was a decent man."