"We'll take you out to the tool house, and press your teeth down on a dry grinding-stone till they get hot and squeak and—"
"Hush, man, hush! In de name of goodness, hush!" Zack covered his wrinkled mouth. "You makes mah jaws feel all scrouged up!"
And after he was again astride the mule, plodding toward Bob's place, his hand continued to stroke with affectionate care those jaws that had been thrown into such spasms of suggested torture, muttering:
"Who ever heerd tell of sech misery as puttin' mah onlies' toof on de grind-stone!"
A mile from Arden stood a house, too near the road to give it the air of being a place of many comforts, even were it in other respects pretentious. But its lightly built porch, precariously nailed to an unpainted frame front, stamped it with poverty.
Here dwelt Tom Hewlet, proprietor of ten acres and a bad name. It was said that his first wife had all but died of neglect, and then burst an artery in her brain while pursuing him with a skillet. The second Mrs. Hewlet still held on. Both, no doubt, possessed virtues, but neighborly sympathy clustered around the present incumbent, because she was the present, and because of a frequently expressed regret that the good Lord had not spared her predecessor until the skillet and Tom had made connection. It was but a whispered wish, for Tom's second choice came from the meek and lowly. He was taking no more chances.
Besides that exciting memory, however, the first Mrs. Hewlet, previously the widow of a country parson, had left him a daughter by that marriage, and this girl, Nancy, had stayed—for Tom's house was, after all, the only place she had to stay. Arden's people and those of Bob's home had felt in a mild way sorry for this girl, sometimes sending over "things," and in other ways showing a long-distance interest; yet the very fact that she lived beneath the roof of such an old reprobate constituted a barrier which many of the less established neighbors would not venture to cross. Just, or unjust, this had made her shunned—at least, not sought; and as she grew into young womanhood, she also grew into a life of solitude. The native swains did not approach because they were afraid of Tom, and girl friends were denied by a far more unrelenting danger—compromise.
This particular spring, however, two events occurred which were vitally affecting her life. The first, when she stopped Jane in the road and asked if she might come to school. From that time forth the teacher began to see many things which others had not given themselves the opportunity to see, and her previous long-distance interest merged with the girl's spirit of secret envy into a companionship—bounded for the most part by school hours, yet a companionship, nevertheless.
Not until then was there exposed a lovelier side of character, doubtless formed in early childhood with her father, the country parson. Jane learned of the mutual adoration which had existed between these two, and, when he had died, how death seemed also to lay a hand upon her budding hopes of life and future. The mother's background she found more difficult to place, and the only glimpse she could get of it was through Nancy's possession of four books left from that forlorn woman's more forlorn estate: the Bible, Swinburne's poems, "Adam Bede" and "Household Hints." That she had been superior to Tom might be accepted without question, and why she married him was simply one of those anomalies which makes our neighbors interesting.
But the seed implanted by the father, a man of honest impulses, remained somewhere the girl's consciousness—latent, nearly parched by the brutality of subsequent environments; until Jane had begun to moisten it with encouragement, and now it was budding. On the other hand, she had seen in Nancy tendencies of less promise: a physical desire to be away from the frame house by the roadside, and a character—not entirely weak, but irresolute—easing its sense of obligation by the devil's insidious argument of poverty; also, that the recent application to perfect her modest learning was in parallel with an unexpressed hope of independence in the cities. Frequently—and invariably after nights when old Tom was on his sprees—Jane had found her pathetically near the precipice of desperation, and it required some pointed talks to hold her steady.