Really Viney Tucker must have arisen from the wrong side of her bed that morning, Sim reflected. She surely was cross.
“So you didn’t go away?” asked Arden, wondering what the next move would be.
“Yes, I did. Went to stay with Sairy Pendleton. But she and I never could get along, so I came back. I came out here to the old smokehouse to get away from everybody. Folks get on my nerves—more than often! This old smokehouse sort of sets me up—better than the perfume you girls use. Bah!”
Sim and Arden were aware of a distinctly smoky odor floating out to them above the head of Viney Tucker. They were aware, now, of the use to which the small stone building had formerly been put. In the old days hams and bacon were cured there over a fire of hickory branches and corncobs, and that smoky smell always remained. It was a curious whim of the old lady to come there for solitude; surely lonely and uncanny.
“Well, if you’ve got all that wrongly called mistletoe you want,” Viney Tucker suggested after rather an awkward pause, “you might as well take yourselves back home so you won’t catch cold.”
“Won’t you catch cold, staying out in this bleak place?” asked Sim.
“No. I never catch cold. It’s only this soft new generation that catches colds. Silly of ’em. Good-bye!”
She popped back into the smokehouse and closed the door.
Sim and Arden stood there, looking at each other in astonishment.
“Come on,” Sim whispered after a pause. “We have enough—mistletoe and smokehouses.”