Mrs. Osborne paused, and her husband said: “We’ll manage it; we’ll manage it somehow. If there is a deficit, we may be able to make it up by private subscription. Perhaps I’ll get a case next term of court, and can make a liberal contribution.� He laughed.
Mr. Osborne—called Red Mayo to distinguish him from a dark-haired cousin of the same name, called Black Mayo—was a lawyer more by profession than by practice; there were not enough law crumbs in The Village, he said, to support a sparrow.
He strolled toward the Court-house while Mrs. Osborne took her last hurried stitches. Then she handed the patched trousers to her son, who rolled indoors and put them on. He went into the garden and gloomily eyed the neglected square where peas and potatoes and onions were merely green lines among crowding weeds.
“I certainly can’t finish it this morning,� he growled. “There’s too much to do.�
“If you work hard, you can finish by sundown,� said his cousin, David Spotswood, who was planting a row of beets on the other side of the garden.
“I can’t work after dinner,� said Dick. “I’ve got something else to do. I just can’t finish it to-day.�
“You’d better,� said Patsy, who had followed him into the garden. “When father says ‘Richard’ and shuts his mouth—so! he means business. Say, Dick! What were you getting that candle for? What are you going to do? Let us go with you, Anne Lewis and me, and I’ll help you here.�
“You help!� Dick spoke in his most superior masculine manner. “Girls haven’t any business in gardens. They ought to stay in the house and make bed-quilts. They’re too afraid of dirty hands and freckled faces.�
Patsy flared up and answered so quickly that her words stepped on one another’s heels. “That’s mean and unfair! You know I hate gloves and bonnets, and I just wear them because mother makes me. But anyway, sir, I think they’re nicer than great-grandmother’s shawl for trousers.�
She went back up the boxwood-bordered walk.