Uncle Amos was fond of Jerry and Judith and spent many hours of undisturbed quiet sitting by their stove talking of the old war and of the wife of his youth.
Once in a while Joe Barnaby came over to get away from the thick atmosphere of home. Joe was a son-in-law of Uncle Sam, having married one of the latter's nine children, Bessie Maud by name. Bessie Maud had not spoken to her mother and father since the occasion of a quarrel which had occurred shortly after her marriage. That was eight years ago. She had also quarreled with several of her brothers and sisters and stopped speaking to them. Such long sustained family feuds were common enough in Scott County where slight grievances dwelt upon in solitude grew like a rolling snowball. But of late years Bessie Maud's temper had become so uncertain and her habit of mind so strongly anti-social that few even of the near neighbors ever went near her house. It was whispered that she had always been a little off. It was in the family, the neighbors said, and it was on Aunt Sally's side. Aunt Sally's father, old Abe Beasley, had been "queer," and so had several of her other relatives on the father's side. And of Aunt Sally's children there were others besides Bessie Maud who showed traces of the taint.
Although Joe was but little over thirty, his hair was streaked with gray, his chest sunken, his features drawn and pinched, his face clouded with a dull misery. How much of this was due to his having to provide for so many babies, to his affliction of chronic rheumatism, and to his domestic troubles nobody could say. The neighbors all felt sorry for him, but nobody was heard to waste any pity on Bessie Maud.
The visitor that Judith liked best to see push open the door was Uncle Jabez Moorhouse. Often the others wearied or annoyed her if they stayed too long. She always knew what they were going to say; and the men nursing the stove got in the way of her cooking. Uncle Jabez was the only one of them all who might say or do the unexpected. When he came in at the door, something of the outside came in with him; and as he stood spreading out his great hands over the top of the stove or sat and smoked meditatively by the oven door, it seemed to her as though a warmth and radiance reached out to her from his great, ungainly body. He was often silent, sometimes weary and cynical, rarely merry through these dismal winter months. Yet whatever his mood, she felt the same emanation from his presence: a heartened feeling, as if the pulse of life had grown stimulatingly strong and full.
Once when they were alone and he had been sitting silently by the stove for a long time, he said, re-crossing his legs:
"You know why I like to come an' set here, Judy? It's 'cause it's as good to me as a half pint o' whiskey in my belly."
The winter dragged slowly to a close, and on its heels came an early spring to hearten the mud-bound tenant farmers. The March winds and warm April sunshine dried up the mud and the shanties were no longer prisons.
"I've a mind to go to Georgetown nex' Court Day," said Jerry one April morning at breakfast. "I'd kinda like to see haow hosses is a-sellin' this spring."
"Let's both go," chimed in Judith eagerly. "I'd love to go. I hain't bin no place all winter; an' I hain't bin to Georgetown but onct in my life."