“Waal,” said Mrs. Sayles, who was very human, and who, despite her sympathy for Elvira, had a rankling recollection of her taunt for Alethea’s paucity of the material for “keeping company,” “I hopes Lethe’ll take warning’, an’ not fling away her good chance, fur the sake o’ the wuthless, like Mink an’ sech.”
“Who be her good chance?” exclaimed Elvira, the jealousy nourished on general principles checking her grief.
“Shucks, child! ye purtendin’ not ter know ez Ben Doaks hev mighty nigh wore out his knee-pans a-beggin’ an’ a-prayin’ Lethe ter listen ter him!”
Elvira was meeker after this, and presently rose to go.
“I hed ter kem arter dark, else I couldn’t hev hed Sam an’ the mare, bein’ ez she hev been workin’ in the field ter-day,” she remarked.
There was the mare dozing at the gate, and Sam, a boy with singularly long legs and arms, looking something like an insect of the genus Tipula, was waiting too. She mounted behind him, and together they rode off in the moonlight, taking their way over the nearest ridge, and so out of sight.
“Waal, waal, sir!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles, as she reseated herself on the porch, with her knitting in her hand, “that thar Mink Lorey never hed no jedgmint no-ways. He couldn’t hev tuk ch’ice of a wuss time ter git fetched up afore a court ’n jes’ now. Squair White tole me ez our Jedge Averill hev agreed ter exchange with Jedge Gwinnan from over yander in Kildeer County nex’ term, ez he can’t try his cases, bein’ kin ter them ez air lawing. So Gwinnan will hold court in Shaftesville nex’ term. I’d hate mightily fur sech a onsartin, onexpected critter ez him ter hev enny say-so ’bout me or mine. But shucks! Men folks ennyhow,” she continued, discursively, her needles swiftly moving, as if they were endowed with independent volition, and needed no supervision, “air freakish, an’ fractious, an’ sot in thar way, an’ gin ter cur’ous cavortin’. It never s’prised me none ez arter the Lord made man he turned in an’ made woman, the fust job bein’ sech a failure.”
There was a pause. The regular metre of the katydid’s song pulsed in the interval. The dewdrops glimmered on the chickweed by the porch. The fragrance of mint and ferns was on the air, and the smell of the dark orchard. Now and then an abrupt thud told that a great Indian peach had reached the measure of ripeness and had fallen. Through the open window and door the moonlight lay in glittering rhomboids on the puncheon floor. All the interior was illuminated, and the grotesque figure of the pet cub was distinctly visible to Jacob Jessup, who was lounging on the porch without, as the creature stole across the floor, and rose upon his hind legs to reach the pine table. As he thrust his scooping claw into the bread trough,—the long, shallow, wooden bowl in which batter for corn-dodgers was mixed,—he turned his cautious head to make sure he was unobserved, and his cunning, twinkling eyes met Jessup’s. Somehow the sudden consciousness of the creature, his nervous haste to be off, appealed to Jessup’s lenient mood. He listened to the scuttling claws on the puncheon floor as the beast hurried out of the back door, and while he debated whether or not he should play informer, his wife, sitting on the doorstep with the baby in her arms, asked suddenly,—
“’Pears like ye air sorter sot agin this Jedge Gwinnan, mother. I never hearn afore ez ye knowed him whenst ye lived in Kildeer County. What sorter man be he?”
Mrs. Sayles wagged her head inside her sun-bonnet to intimate contempt.