“Waal, sir, one thing,—her housekeepin’ couldn’t ’stonish him none arter Mis’ Purvine’s,” remarked Mrs. Jessup, with an elaborate semblance of seeing the brighter side of things.
“Shucks!” Mrs. Sayles commented. “He’d miss mightily the show and the shine he hev been used ter along o’ Mis’ Purvine.”
“Waal,” said Ben, “I don’t b’lieve ez Mis’ Purvine would mind much who Jerry marries, so long ez he keeps clar o’ Elviry Crosby. Mis’ Purvine air mightily outdone with her. She hev been mournin’ fur Peter Rood same ez ef she war a widder-woman. An’ ye know she wouldn’t speak ter him ez long ez Mink war out’n the grip o’ the sher’ff. She tried ter toll Pete back arterwards. I hearn him ’low sech when they war drawin’ the jury. I dunno how she made out.”
Mrs. Sayles gazed at the fire solemnly from under her pink sun-bonnet. “Death tolled him,” she said lugubriously.
“I’d jes’ ez lief Death as Elviry Crosby,” said Mrs. Jessup, in calm superiority to the wiles of feminine fascination.
Old man Sayles shook his head in negation.
“Mighty dark under the ground,” he said, with terror of the termination of life; which for him signified so little that a sponge with a vocable or two might have seemed his correlative.
But when Ben was gone,—and the sight of Alethea, silent, absorbed, pallid, broken-hearted, gave him little wish to prolong his stay,—the scene at the fireside was less amicable and cheerful. The elder women, bereft of gossip, bickered over the trifling mishaps of the day. The old man sorted his “lumber.” Jessup slouched and lazed and smoked. Only the weather varied the aspect of the world. The snow slipped away in the thaw, leaving mud and ooze and intervals of blackened ice. Then the rains descended, and the scene without was dimly visible through the long, slanting, dun-colored fringes of the cloud. The roof clamored with the resonant fall of the drops, the clapboards leaked, and puddles formed even in the ashes of the chimney corner. The sun might shine vaguely for a day. The chill splendors of the wintry constellations scintillated icily in the dark spaces of the night. But the clouds, rallying from every repulse, closed once more about the Great Smoky, and ravine and peak and cove were again deeply covered with snow.
Mrs. Jessup bewailed the change. “I war a-hopin’,” she remarked, “ez we would hev no mo’ fallin’ weather, so Lethe could go ter the meetin’ at the church-house in Eskaqua Cove, an’ fetch up some word o’ what’s a-goin’ on down thar ter this benighted roost. I war raised in the cove! I ain’t used ter sech a dwindlin’ sort o’ life ez this hyar.”