IX
BY THE LOOM
On Monday, Mason saw with regret that Barbara was not at school. On Tuesday he felt solicitous, and would have made inquiry if it had not been for an impulse of secretiveness. By Wednesday he began to fear that his words spoken to her at the meadow fence had something to do with her absence. He questioned the past. He could not remember that she had ever repelled his attentions, or that she had seemed displeased when he had spoken his fervent and unpremeditated words. Aware that his bearing toward Barbara had attracted the observation of the school, he did not summon courage to ask about her until Thursday. Then when the voluble Mely McCord came to him before the beginning of the afternoon session, to ask how she should proceed to divide 130 by 9, he inquired if Barbara was ill.
"No, I don't 'low she's sick," responded Mely. "I sh'd 'a' thought she'd tole you, 'f anybody, what't wuz kep' 'er"; and Mely laughed a malicious little snicker, which revealed her belief that the master was in confidential relations with his algebra scholar. "She thinks the worl'n'all of the school an' the master." Mely gasped a little as she ventured this thrust, and quickly added, "An' of algebray—she's that fond of algebray; but I sh'd thought she'd 'a' tole you what kep' 'er, ur'a' sen' choo word. But I 'low it's got sumpin' to do weth the trouble in the family."
Mely made what the old schoolmasters called a "full stop" at this point, as though she considered it certain that Mason would know all about Barbara's affairs.
"Trouble? What trouble?" asked the master.
"W'y, I 'low'd you'd 'a' knowed," said the teasing creature, shaking her rusty ringlets, with a fluttering, half-suppressed amusement at the anxiety she had awakened in Mason's mind. "Hain' choo h-yeard about her brother?"
"No; which brother? The one that's in Moscow?"
"W'y, lawsy, don'choo know't she hain't got nary nuther one? The res' 's all dead an' buried long ago. Her brother Tom lost 'is sitooation along of gamblin' an' the like. They say he lost the boots offviz feet an' the coat offviz back." Here Mely had to give vent to her feelings in a hearty giggle; Tom's losses seemed to her a joke of the best, and all the better that the master took it so seriously. "I 'low it's cut Barb'ry up more'n a little. She sot sech store by Tom. An' he is smart, the smartest feller you'd find fer books an' the like. But what's the use a-bein' so smart an' then bein' sech a simple into the bargain? I say."