“Well, Wint, I hear you’ve set out to clean up Hardiston.”
Wint gulped what was in his mouth, and uneasily admitted that this was true. Mrs. Chase was talking to Hetty about the pie and did not hear what they said. Chase asked:
“What does Amos think of that?”
Wint looked for an instant at his father. “Thinks it’s all right,” he said.
Mrs. Chase came back into the conversation then. She had the aggravating habit of catching the tail end of a story or a remark and demanding that the whole be repeated for her benefit. “What’s all right?” she asked. “What’s all right, Wint? Who thinks it’s all right? It keeps me so busy looking after things here that it seems like I never hear what’s going on. What is it that—”
Chase told her quietly: “Wint has given Marshal Radabaugh orders not to allow any more selling of liquor in Hardiston.”
Mrs. Chase was astonished. She said so. “Well, I never,” she exclaimed. “You know, Wint, I never thought you’d do that. I think it’s time, though, something was done. I told Mrs. Hullis ... I was saying to Mrs. Hullis here only yesterday that it was a shame, the way men were getting drunk. That Ote Runns, that beats my carpets, came here yesterday to do some work for me, and I paid him; and Mrs. Hullis saw him coming home from town that afternoon, and he couldn’t even stay on the sidewalk, he was staggering so. I declare, it makes you feel like not paying a man like that for working for you, when he can go right off and spend his money on whisky, and his wife and children at home—”
Wint said, with a glance at his father: “Ote’s not married, mother. He hasn’t any wife; and as far as I know, he hasn’t any children.”
“Well, suppose he had,” she demanded, “wouldn’t it be just the same? I declare, Wint, you’re always contradicting me. But I said to Mrs. Hullis I thought it was a shame, and she said she thought so too, and it is. You’ve done just right, Wint. I didn’t think anybody could ever do that, or I’d have told you to do it before. I didn’t know the Mayor had the say of that, Wint. I thought the Mayor was the man you went to when your dogs got into the pound. I remember Mrs. Hullis’s dog got taken to the pound, three years ago, and she went to Mayor Johnson, he was then, and he got him out for her. And I told her—”
Wint had been watching his father. He had expected the older man to be proud of him, and had rather dreaded this pride. He had prepared himself to disclaim any praise that might come. But—Chase was not offering to praise him. There was no pride in his father’s face; there was rather an uneasy regret, and it fired the antagonism in Wint, and made him feel like defending himself. He asked, interrupting Mrs. Chase, whether the elder Chase thought the orders should be enforced.