“Eighteen dollars! and I don’t suppose you can have much more than that on hand!” Mrs. Horton’s face lengthened. “I wish I had it to lend you,” she remarked, at last. “You could pay me in sewing; but Jake—”
We had heard of Mr. Horton’s views on the money question. He always ran bills at the store because, he said, a woman couldn’t be trusted with ready cash. “Give a woman her head and she’ll spend all a man has on knick-knacks!” was an observation with which even his chance acquaintances were unduly familiar. How often, then, must his poor wife have heard it.
Pitying her halting effort to give a good excuse for not having the sum needed—when they were so wealthy—and still loyally shield her tyrant, I said: “I’m sure the witnesses will not be at all hard on us; they will be willing to wait a little if necessary, don’t you think so, Jessie?”
But before Jessie could reply, Joe interposed: “Mr. Wilson, he done say he goin’ gib me a chance for to wuck for him w’en I wants to; mebbe I goin’ want ter wuck out dem witness fee; no tellin’.”
This was ambiguous, but we well understood that the old man did not like to talk of business matters before strangers—as he regarded every one outside the immediate family.
“Your first notice came out along in the spring, didn’t it?” Mrs. Horton inquired.
“In April,” Jessie replied, and was silent, a dreamy look in her eyes, while I vividly recalled the stormy day when father came back from a visit to the post-office with the paper containing the first notice in his hand. I heard the April rain beating against the window panes while father told us children—for Jessie and I were children then; it was so long ago, measured by heart-beats, oh! so long ago—that our notice was out and the witnesses named.
Joe broke a little silence by remarking: “Dere’s ten acres ob as fine w’eat as ebber growed out doahs, a waitin’ to be cut an’ threshed atwixt dat day an’ dis.”
“Ten acres!” Mrs. Horton echoed. “What a help that’ll be to you! I do hope you’ll get it taken care of all right.”