And then the widow told her story, with tears and smiles, and the keen enjoyment which we all have in talking about ourselves to a sympathetic listener like Aunt Polly, whose interjections pointed and illuminated the narrative. When it was finished she leaned forward and kissed Mrs. Cullom on the cheek.
"I can't tell ye how glad I be for ye," she said; "but if I'd known that David held that morgidge, I could hev told ye ye needn't hev worried yourself a mite. He wouldn't never have taken your prop'ty, more'n he'd rob a hen-roost. But he done the thing his own way—kind o' fetched it round fer a Merry Chris'mus, didn't he? Curious," she said reflectively, after a momentary pause, "how he lays up things about his childhood," and then, with a searching look at the Widow Cullom, "you didn't let on, an' I didn't ask ye, but of course you've heard the things that some folks says of him, an' natchally they got some holt on your mind. There's that story about 'Lish, over to Whitcom—you heard somethin' about that, didn't ye?"
"Yes," admitted the widow, "I heard somethin' of it, I s'pose."
"Wa'al," said Mrs. Bixbee, "you never heard the hull story, ner anybody else really, but I'm goin' to tell it to ye—"
"Yes," said Mrs. Cullom assentingly.
Mrs. Bixbee sat up straight in her chair with her hands on her knees and an air of one who would see justice done.
"'Lish Harum," she began, "wa'n't only half-brother to Dave. He was hull-brother to me, though, but notwithstandin' that, I will say that a meaner boy, a meaner growin' man, an' a meaner man never walked the earth. He wa'n't satisfied to git the best piece an' the biggist piece—he hated to hev any one else git anythin' at all. I don't believe he ever laughed in his life, except over some kind o' suff'rin'—man or beast—an' what'd tickle him the most was to be the means on't. He took pertic'ler delight in abusin' an' tormentin' Dave, an' the poor little critter was jest as 'fraid as death of him, an' good reason. Father was awful hard, but he didn't go out of his way; but 'Lish never let no chance slip. Wa'al, I ain't goin' to give you the hull fam'ly hist'ry, an' I've got to go into the kitchen fer a while 'fore dinner, but what I started out fer 's this: 'Lish fin'ly settled over to Whitcom."
"Did he ever git married?" interrupted Mrs. Cullom.
"Oh, yes," replied Mrs. Bixbee, "he got married when he was past forty. It's curious," she remarked, in passing, "but it don't seem as if the' was ever yit a man so mean but he c'd find some woman was fool enough to marry him, an' she was a putty decent sort of a woman too, f'm all accounts, an' good lookin'. Wa'al, she stood him six or seven year, an' then she run off."
"With another man?" queried the widow in an awed voice. Aunt Polly nodded assent with compressed lips.