Sir [it ran stiffly]: I shall be obliged if you do not chop any more wood for me. Hereafter I shall use the oil stove. HULDAH PENDLETON GREGG.
Cyrus choked, and peered at the name with suddenly blurred eyes: the “Huldah Pendleton” was fiercely black and distinct; the “Gregg” was so faint it could scarcely be discerned.
“Why, it’s ’most like a d’vorce!” he shivered.
If it had not been so pitiful, it would have been ludicrous--what followed. Day after day, in one corner of the kitchen, an old man boiled his potatoes and fried his unappetizing eggs over a dusty, unblacked stove; in the other corner an old woman baked and brewed over a shining idol of brass and black enamel--and always the baking and brewing carried to the nostrils of the hungry man across the room the aroma of some dainty that was a particular favorite of his own.
The man whistled, and the woman hummed--at times; but they did not talk, except when some neighbor came in; and then they both talked very loud and very fast--to the neighbor. On this one point were Cyrus Gregg and his wife Huldah agreed; under no circumstances whatever must any gossiping outsider know.
One by one the weeks had passed. It was November now, and very cold. Outdoors a dull gray sky and a dull brown earth combined into a dismal hopelessness. Indoors the dull monotony of a two-months-old quarrel and a growing heartache made a combination that carried even less of cheer.
Huldah never hummed now, and Cyrus seldom whistled; yet neither was one whit nearer speaking. Each saw this, and, curiously enough, was pleased. In fact, it was just here that, in spite of the heartache, each found an odd satisfaction.
“By sugar--but she’s a spunky one!” Cyrus would chuckle admiringly, as he discovered some new evidence of his wife’s shrewdness in obtaining what she wanted with yet no spoken word.
“There isn’t another man in town who could do it--and stick to it!” exulted Huldah proudly, her eyes on her husband’s form, bent over his egg-frying at the other side of the room.
Not only the cause of the quarrel, but almost the quarrel itself, had now long since been forgotten; in fact, to both Cyrus and his wife it had come to be a sort of game in which each player watched the other’s progress with fully as much interest as he did his own. And yet, with it all there was the heartache; for the question came to them at times with sickening force--just when and how could it possibly end?