“He’s got me.”
“Ess, an’ he’m mouldin’ you to his awn vain pride an’ wrong ways o’ thinking. If you could lead un right, ’t would be a better wife’s paart.”
“He’m wiser’n me, an’ stronger. Ban’t my place to think against him. Us’ll go our ways, childern tu, an’ turn our backs ’pon this desert. I hate the plaace now, same as Will.”
Chris here interrupted Phoebe and called her from the other room.
“Wheer’s the paper an’ ink to? I be setting out the things against Will comes in. He axed for ’em to be ready, ’cause theer’s a deal o’ penmanship afore him to-night. An’ wheer’s that li’l dictionary what I gived un years ago? I lay he’ll want it.”
CHAPTER V
TWO MIGHTY SURPRISES
Will returned from survey of his tribulation. Hope was dead for the moment, and death of hope in a man of Blanchard’s character proved painful. The writing materials distracted his mind. Beginning without interest, his composition speedily absorbed him; and before the task was half completed, he already pictured it set out in great black or red print upon conspicuous places.
“I reckon it’ll make some of ’em stare to see the scholar I am, anyways,” he reflected.
Through the hours of night he wrote and re-wrote. His pen scratched along, echoed by an exactly similar sound from the wainscots, where mice nibbled in the silence. Anon, from the debris of his composition, a complete work took shape; and when Phoebe awoke at three o’clock, discovered her husband was still absent, and sought him hurriedly, she found the inventory completed and Will just fastening its pages together with a piece of string. He was wide awake and in a particularly happy humour.
“Ban’t you never comin’ to bed? ’T is most marnin’,” she said.