“Yes’m,” drawled Ben, seating himself on the edge of the porch, near Jacob, “I keeps toler’ble well.”
“I dunno how ye do it,—livin’ off’n what ye cooks yerse’f.” She manifested a truly mundane interest in the eligible young man. She did not return to her chair by the fireside, but sat down on the doorstep. “I’d look ter be p’isoned ef I hed ter live on yer cookin’.”
“Waal, I reckon ye couldn’t put up with it right handy, seem’ the sorter table ye set out hyar.”
Was the old woman more than human, to be untouched by this sincere tribute?
“Ye oughter kem down hyar oftener ye do, Ben, an’ bide ter meals,” she said, her spectacles turned upon him with a certain grave luminosity. “We’ll make ye powerful welcome ter sech vittles ez we hev got. Ye ain’t been hyar fur a right smart time.”
“I know that, but somehows I never kin feel right welcome comin’ so often,” said Ben. He had leaned back against the post of the porch. He could look, without moving, into Alethea’s grave, absorbed face as she worked.
“’Count o’ Lethe? Shucks! thar ain’t but one fool hyar. Mought kem ter see the rest o’ we-uns.”
Alethea’s face flushed. Ben Doaks, dismayed to be the indirect occasion of her anger, and secretly affronted by the breach of decorum which he considered involved in this open mention of his bootless suit, hastened to change the subject. “Did ye hev a word ter say ter me, Jacob?” he asked. “Ye ’lowed, day ’fore yestiddy, ye wanted ter sell yer steer.”
There was now no sound from the cove. The burnished glisters of the sunshine hung above it, holding in suspension a gauzy haze, through which the purple mountains were glamourous and darkly vague. Jacob, his senses yet in thrall, could hardly recall the question he had desired to ask concerning the rifle-shots that had trivially jarred its perfect serenity.