“The men,” said Polly, “were not all wicked.”
Granny winced. But she spoke again, very gently, “Sometimes cruelty from men is—is better than too much kindness. Eh, Polly, my girl?”
There was no answer. The spinning wheel whirred unevenly.
Granny sighed. “Of course you needn’t talk to me unless you’ve a mind to. Only, remember, if you’ve got something to forget, that ain’t the way to do it, keeping it all to yourself; that ain’t the way to do it!”
After a pause she spoke again, haltingly:
“Sometimes I’ve thought—maybe it’s because I’m old, getting into my dotage—but I’ve thought there might be things you didn’t want to forget! I know how it takes ahold of men, that wild, free life. It sort of spoils ’em for houses and folks and duties, and such as that. They keep wanderin’ off, further and further off, till some day they don’t never come back. My Dan’l, your own grandfather, was like that. But women are different, Polly. They’ve got to be! They’ve got to mind the house, and see that the fire don’t go out; see that the courage don’t go out in their men folk, either, because it takes more than tinder to light that again. Else there soon wouldn’t be any homes to mind, all of us wanderin’ round loose in herds, like the wild beasts. Sometimes, since we got you back, Polly, I’ve been scared you might have inherited a sort of hankerin’ for the wilderness, from your grandfather, dearie⸺”
The girl had stopped spinning. She slipped over to the cradle and crouched beside it, whispering in a sort of moan, “Nenemoosha, Nenemoosha⸺”
“Ah, was he stirring in his sleep, and his deaf old Granny never heard? Takes a mother’s ear for that! But you oughtn’t to talk to him in that outlandish tongue, I declare you oughtn’t. ‘Nenemoosha’—what a name for a boy that’s just been christened a good, sound Bible ‘John’! Whatever does it mean?”
“It means ‘Beloved,’” answered the girl, very low.
“Oh, just a pet-name,” said the other, mollified, “and a right pretty one, too! Is it hungry, then, poor little starved lamb?” she added, for the baby was whimpering urgently.