"I don't allow my family off the farm," he went on, "except when we go to meetin', and that's not often. There's hardly an orthodox preacher left, seems to me; but we go up to the Ridge meetin' house sometimes."
"I should think you would find it a little dull—don't you?" I ventured.
Drusilla flashed a grateful look at me.
"Nothing of the sort," he answered. "I was born on this farm, and it's big enough for anybody to be contented on. Your Aunt was born over in Hadley Holler—and she's contented enough. As for Drusilly—" he looked at her again with real affection, "Drusilla's always been a good girl—never made any trouble in her life. Unless 'twas when she pretty near married that heretic minister—eh, Drusilly?"
My cousin did not respond warmly to this sally, but neither did she show signs of grief. I was conscious of a faint satisfaction that she had not married the heretic minister.
They made me very welcome, so welcome indeed that as days passed, Uncle Jake even broached the subject of my remaining there.
"I've got no son," he said, "and a girl can't run the farm. You stay here, John, and keep things goin', and I'll will it to you—what do you say? You ain't married, I see. Just get you a nice girl—if there's any left, and settle down here."
I thanked him warmly, but said I must have time to consider—that I had thought of accepting other work which offered.
He was most insistent about it. "You better stay here, John. Here's pure air and pure food—none of these artificial kickshaws I hear of folks havin' nowadays. We smoke our own hams just as we used to do in my grandfather's time—there's none better. We buy sugar and rice and coffee and such as that; but I grind my own corn in the little mill there on the creek—reckon I'm the only one who uses it now. And your Aunt runs her loom to this day. Drusilly can, too, but she 'lows she hates to do it. Girls aren't what they used to be when I was young!"
It did not seem possible that Uncle Jake had ever been young. His sturdy, stooping frame, his hard, ruddy features were the same at seventy as I remembered them at forty, only the hair, whitened and thinned, was different.