He had an admirable perseverance. He sat still weeping in the midst of his pink fat with so much distortion of countenance and display of gums, and such loud vocal exercises, when Adelaide returned, that she cast upon her husband a look of deep reproach, and he divined that she suspected him of having gone to the extreme length of smiting Dagon in her absence, and despite his clear conscience he could but look guilty.
"Oh, Mose!" he said, outdone, as he rose, "ye air so mean—ye air so durned mean!"
But the callow wrath of the "leetle Mose" was more formidable than the displeasure of the big man, and his heart burned at the short reply of his wife, a sarcastic "I reckon so!" when he protested that he had done nothing to Mose to which any fair-minded infant could have taken exceptions. The vocalizations of Dagon were of such unusual power this evening that his strength failed shortly after supper, and he was asleep earlier than his ordinary hour, for he was something of a late bird. Belying all his traits, he looked angelic as he lay in his little rude box cradle. When the moonlight came creeping through the door it found him there, with a smile on his rose-leaf lips, and both his pink hands unclasped on the coverlet. Adelaide, despite the silence and studious air of preoccupation she had maintained toward her husband, could but beg Yates to observe the child's beauty as she sank down, dead beat, on the doorstep to rest, but still keeping one hand on the rocker of the cradle, for motion was pleasing to "leetle Mose," and by this requisition he doubtless understood that he could absorb and occupy his elders, even when he was unconscious.
"He's purty enough, the Lord knows," the dejected father assented, as he sat smoking his pipe at a little distance on the step of the porch. "I dun' no', though, what ails him ter take sech a spite at me. I do all I kin ter pleasure him."
Adelaide experienced a vicarious qualm of conscience. "He ain't got no spite at you-uns," she said, reassuringly, in the hope that her words could speak louder than Dagon's actions. "It's jes' his teeth harry him so."
"An' ye didn't useter be so easy sot agin me." Yates preferred this complaint after a meditative puff of the pipe. There is a melancholy pleasure in the role of domestic martyr. He was beginning to enjoy himself.
"I ain't sot agin ye, but somebody hev got ter take up an' gin up fur leetle Mose. Men folks hain't got no patience with leetle chil'n."
"I never knowed what 'twar ter gin up afore," he protested. "I ain't done nuthin' else sence Mose war born. Don't go nowhar, don't see nuthin' nor nobody."
He smoked languidly for a few moments, then, with decision: "Thar ain't no use in it; we-uns mought jes' ez well hev gone ter the infair over yander in the cove at Pettingill's ez not ter-night, an' got Aunt Jerushy ter bide with Moses till we kem back."
"Moses would hev hollered hisself inter a fit; he jes' stiffens at the sight o' Aunt Jerushy."