Mrs. Griggs’s pink calico sunbonnet surmounted the cap with the explanatory ruffle. She carried a fan of turkey feathers, and with appropriate gesticulation, it aided in expounding to Mrs. Dicey the astonishing news that Nate had found a gold mine on vacant land, and had entered the tract. They intended to send specimens to the State Assayer, and they were all getting ready to begin work at once.
Another surprise to Birt! The ignorant mountain boy had never heard of the Assayer. But indeed Nate had only learned of the existence of the office and its uses during that memorable trip to Sparta.
The prideful Mrs. Griggs from her elevation, literal and metaphorical, supplemented all this by the creditable statements that Nate had turned twenty-one, had cast his vote, and had a right to a choice at the Cross-roads.
Then she chirruped to the rawboned sorrel mare, and jogged off down the road, followed by the frisky colt, whose long, slender legs when in motion seemed so fragile that it was startling to witness the temerity with which he kicked up his frolicsome heels. The dogs, with that odd canine affectation of having just perceived the intruders, pursued them with sudden asperity, barking and snapping, and at last came trotting nimbly home, wagging their tails and with a dutiful mien.
Mrs. Dicey went back into the house, and sat for a time in envious meditation, fairly silenced, and with her apron flung over her face. Then she fell to lamenting that she had been working all her life for nothing, and it would take so little to make the family comfortable, and that her children seemed “disabled somehow in thar heads, an’ though always rootin’ around in the woods, hed never fund no gold mine nor nuthin’ else out o’ the common.”
Birt kept silent, but the gloom and trouble in his face suddenly touched her heart.
“Thar now, Birt!” she exclaimed, with a world of consolation in her tones, “I don’t mean ter say that, nuther. Ain’t I a-thinkin’ day an’ night o’ how smart ye be - stiddy an’ sensible an’ hard-workin’ jes’ like a man - an’ what a good son ye hev been to me! An’ the t’other chill’n air good too, an’ holps me powerful, though Rufe air hendered some, by the comical natur o’ the critter.”
She broke out with a cheerful laugh, in which Birt could not join.
“An’ I mus’ be gittin’ breakfus fur the chill’n,” she said, kneeling down on the hearth, and uncovering the embers which had been kept all night under the ashes.
“Don’t ye fret, sonny. I ain’t goin’ ter grudge Nate his gold mine. I reckon sech a good son ez ye be, an’ a gold mine too, would be too much luck fur one woman. Don’t ye fret, sonny.”