VIII.
The disappointment which Amos James experienced found expression in much the same manner as that of many men of higher culture. He went down to his home in Eskaqua Cove, moody and morose. He replied to his chirping mother in discouraging monosyllables. In taciturn disaffection he sat on the step of the little porch, and watched absently a spider weaving her glittering gossamer maze about an overhanging mass of purple grapes, with great green leaves that were already edged with a rusty red and mottled with brown. A mocking-bird boldly perched among them, ever and anon, the airy grace of his pose hardly giving, in its exquisite lightness, the effect of a pause. The bird swallowed the grapes whole with a mighty gulp, and presently flew away with one in his bill for the refreshment of his family, whose vibratory clamour in an althea bush hard by mingled with the drone of the grasshoppers in the wet grass, louder than ever since the rain, and the persistent strophe and antistrophe of the frogs down on the bank of the mill-pond.
'Did they git enny shower up in the mounting, Amos?' demanded his mother, as she sat knitting on the porch—a thin little woman, with a nervous, uncertain eye and a drawling, high-pitched voice.
'Naw'm,' said Amos, 'not ez I knows on.'
'I reckon ye'd hev knowed ef ye hed got wet,' she said, with asperity. 'Ye hain't got much feelin', no ways—yer manners shows it—but I 'low ye would feel the rain ef it kem down right smart, or ef ye war streck by lightnin'.'
There was no retort, and from the subtle disappointment in the little woman's eye it might have seemed that to inaugurate a controversy would have been more filial, so bereft of conversational opportunity was her lonely life, where only a 'gang o' men loped 'round the mill.'
She knitted on with a sharp clicking of the needles for a time, carrying the thread on a gnarled fourth finger, which seemed unnaturally active for that member, and somehow officious.
'I'll be bound ye went ter Cayce's house,' she said aggressively.
There was another long pause. The empty dwelling behind them was so still that one could hear the footsteps of an intruding rooster, as he furtively entered at the back door.
'Shoo!' she said, shaking her needles at him, as she bent forward and saw him standing in the slant of the sunshine, all his red and yellow feathers burnished. He had one foot poised motionless, and looked at her with a reproving side-glance, as if he could not believe he had caught the drift of her remarks. Another gesture, more pronounced than the first, and he went scuttling out, his wings half spread and his toe-nails clattering on the puncheon floor. 'Ye went ter Cayce's, I'll be bound, and hyar ye be, with nuthin' ter tell. Ef I war free ter jounce 'round the mounting same ez the idle, shif'less men-folks, who hev got nuthin' ter do but eye a mill ez the water works, I'd hev so much ter tell whenst I got home that ye'd hev ter tie me in a cheer ter keep me from talkin' myself away, like somebody happy with religion. An' hyar ye be, actin' like ye hed no mo' gift o' speech'n the rooster. Shoo! Shoo! Whar did ye go, ennyhow, when ye war on the mounting?'