“What’s all this?” he gruffly demanded, as the face of William appeared over his shoulder with the same inquisitive expression.
“Annie’s doing up my hand,” Mauney replied calmly.
Bard covered the floor in long strides to glance at the white bandage through which a red stain had already soaked.
“Do it up yerself!” he commanded, seizing the woman’s arm and pulling her away. “Where’s the supper, Annie?”
“Oh, it’ll be ready by the time you get some o’ the muck off your hands,” she said, good-naturedly, as she set about stirring a boiling pot on the stove.
As Mauney stood trying to adjust the dressing, he struggled to overcome an instinct of fight, wondering how much longer he would be able to tolerate his father’s crude domination. Presently the woman had the supper served and the men, having washed themselves, were sitting down.
The oval table was covered with a plain yellow oil-cloth. At the middle stood a heavy earthenware dish filled with steaming, half-peeled potatoes, and near it, on a folded newspaper, an agateware sauce-pan held beet-roots. Five plates of blurred willow pattern were piled by the father’s place, while before them a roast of pork, with crisply-browned skin, still sizzled in its own grease. By the woman’s place, at the opposite end, stood a large agate tea-pot and a chunk of uncolored butter, upon whose surface salt crystals sparkled in the lamplight. The lamp was shaded by a sloping collar of scorched pasteboard, while the constant flicker of the yellow flame rendered tremulously uncertain the faces around the board.
Mauney’s usual taciturnity, inspired by a feeling of being constantly misunderstood whenever he spoke, was increased by the pain in his hand, so that he sat in silence, catching the conversation of the others as something quite outside his own immediate consciousness. He was thinking about a new book the school teacher had loaned him.
“Well,” remarked Bard, seizing his carving knife, and plunging his fork deep into the roast, “I guess this just about finishes the pig, don’t it?”
“Yep. You’ll have to kill to-morrow,” the woman replied, as she reached for the hired man’s tea cup. She noticed he was nibbling at an onion, which he had taken from his pocket. “Ain’t you afraid yer best girl will go back on you, Snowball?” she teased.