“Bluff hev got mos’ o’ the brains in that thar comp’ny,” she said to herself with indignation because of their mutual indifference. “But Lethe Ann Sayles air mighty diffe’nt from some wimmin, ef she kin hold her jaw fur twenty year, an’ keep that thar dead-an’-gin-out look on her face fur Mink Lorey. He can’t git back ’fore then. An’ Jerry’s got ez good a chance ez Ben Doaks. But it’s mighty hard on a pore old woman like me, ez hed trouble enough marryin’ herself off thirty year ago, a-runnin’ away an’ sech, ter gin herself ter studyin’ ’bout sech foolishness in her old age ez love-makin’, an’ onsettlin’ her mind, ’kase they hain’t got enough sense ter do thar courtin’ ’thout help.”
But this unique grievance was so inadequate that Mrs. Purvine gave up the effort to eke out thereby her ill-humor, and gazed about with placid complacence at the spring landscape, tossing all the bags of seed together into a splint basket, to be sorted at some more propitious day.
In Bluff’s slow progress along the red clay road, the gradual unfolding of the scene, the vernal peace, the benedictory sunshine, had their benignant effect on Alethea. Absorbed as she had been, in descending the mountain, by her anxiety for the specious aunt Dely’s illness, she had not noted until now how far the spring was advanced in the sheltered depths of the cove, how loath to climb to the sterile fastnesses of Wild-Cat Hollow.
“The season ’pears ter be toler’ble back’ard in the hollow, jedgin’ by the cove,” she remarked, her eyes resting wistfully upon the tender verdure on the margin of the river. The sun was warm, for it was not long past noon, and Bluff stopped to drink in the midst of the ford. The translucent brown water above the bowlders, all distinct in its clear depths, washed about the miry wheels, and lapsed with soft sighs against the rocky banks; great silvery circles elastically expanded on its surface about the ox’s muzzle, distorting somewhat the image of his head and his big, insistent, sullen eyes and long horns, as he drank. Whenever the sunbeams struck the current a bevy of tiny insects might be seen, skittering about over the water; and hark! a frog was croaking on a rotten log in the dank shadow of the laurel. From the fields beyond the call of the quail was sweet and clear. The ranges encompassing the cove on every hand seemed doubly beautiful, doubly dear, with the tender promise of summer upon them, with the freshened delights of soft airs pervading them, with the predominant sense of the liberated joys of nature in the bourgeonings and the blooms, in the swift rushing of torrents, in the whirl of wings. The wooded lines of those summits close at hand were drawn in fine detail against the sky, save where the great balds towered,—symmetrical, ponderous, bare domes; further mountains showed purple and blue, and among them was a lowering gray portent that might have seemed a storm-cloud, save to those who knew the strange, cumulose outline of Thunderhead.
Everywhere birds were building. A couple of jays were carrying straws from a heap in a corner of a fence; they rose with a great whirl of blue and white feathers, as Bluff, his horns nodding, approached them. A dove was cooing in a clump of dogwood trees, whitely blooming by the road. There was a great commotion of wings in the air from a lofty martin-house in a wayside door-yard, as the plucky denizens chased a hawk round and round and out of sight.
“Thought that thar war the way ter the post-office at Squair Bates’s, Jerry,” Alethea observed, pointing down one of those picturesque winding roads, so common to the region, threading the forests, its tawny red convolutions flecked with shadow and sheen, showing in long, fascinating vistas, and luring one to follow.
“Yes, sir,” said Jerry, “but I hev got ter take ye ter the post-office at Locust Levels. Ain’t ye hearn aunt Dely ’low that? An’ I hev got ter leave ye thar whilst I go ter the grist-mill nigh by, off the road a piece.”
Alethea flushed with a dull annoyance, recognizing the device that the long drive might be still longer. She nevertheless made no comment. They were each too dutiful to vary the plan of the journey, although aunt Dely might have considered this only obedience in the letter, and not in the spirit, as neither again spoke for a mile or more.
“This be Kildeer County,” said Jerry, at last, breaking the long silence. “We-uns crossed the line back thar ’bout haffen hour ago.”
Alethea’s pensive enjoyment of the gentle influences of the scene was marred. To be sure, aunt Dely had an unequivocal right to send, if she liked, to the post-office at Locust Levels, a hamlet of Kildeer County, rather than to the one nearer, in her own county; but it was a patent subterfuge that she should expect to receive letters here from their friends in Shaftesville. It was Alethea’s excellent common sense that had preserved her from the folly of the continual anticipation of a letter, so common among ignorant people, who, with no acquaintances elsewhere, beset the post-offices with their demands. She had never asked for a letter for herself, and there had begun to be revealed to her the fact that it was not a post-office which could produce an epistle for Mrs. Purvine; she needed a correspondent.