"As if I cared!" thought Dorinda proudly. "As if I wanted to talk to him!"
The train to the north had gone by at five o'clock, and the next one, which Miss Seena had just taken to Richmond, was the last that would stop before afternoon. The few farmers who had lounged about the track were now waiting in the store, while Nathan weighed and measured or counted small change into callous palms. Here and there a negro in blue jeans overalls stood patiently, with an expression of wistful resignation which was characteristic less of an individual than of a race. There was little talk among the white farmers, and that little was confined to the crops, or the weather. Rugged, gnarled, earth-stained, these men were as impersonal as trees or as transcendental philosophers. In their rustic pride they accepted silence as they accepted poverty or bad weather, without embarrassment and without humility. If they had nothing to say, they were capable of sitting for hours, dumb and unabashed, over their pipes or their "plugs" of tobacco. They could tell a tale, provided there was one worth the telling, with caustic wit and robust realism; but the broad jest or the vulgar implication of the small town was an alien product among them. Not a man of them would have dared recite an anecdote in Pedlar's store that Dorinda should not have heard. The transcendental point of view, the habit of thought bred by communion with earth and sky, had refined the grain while it had roughened the husk.
"Do you want me to wait on Mr. Appleseed?" asked Dorinda, glancing past Nathan to the genial, ruddy old farmer, who was standing near her, with his idiot son close at his side. As she spoke she lifted the top from one of the tall jars on the counter, and held out a stick of striped peppermint candy. "Here's a stick of candy for you, Billy."
The boy grinned at her with his sagging mouth, and made a snatch at the candy.
"Say thanky, son," prompted John Appleseed.
"Thanky," muttered Billy obediently, slobbering over the candy.
"No, I'll look after John as soon as I've fixed up this brown sugar," said Nathan. "I wish you'd take those ducks from Aunt Mehitable Green. She's been waitin' a long time, and she ain't so young as she used to be. Tell her I'll allow her seventy-five cents for the pair, if they're good size. She wants the money's worth in coffee and Jamaica ginger."
"Why, I didn't know Aunt Mehitable was here!" Glancing quickly about, she discovered the old woman sitting on a box at the far end of the room, with the pair of ducks in her lap. "I didn't see you come in, or I'd have spoken to you before," added the girl, hurrying to her.
Aunt Mehitable Green had assisted at Dorinda's birth, which had been unusually difficult, and there was a bond of affection, as well as a sentimental association, between them. Mrs. Oakley, with her superior point of view, had always been friendly with the negroes around her. During Dorinda's childhood both mother and daughter had visited Aunt Mehitable in her cabin at Whistling Spring, and the old midwife had invariably returned their simple gifts of food or wine made from scuppernong grapes, with slips of old-fashioned flowers or "physic" brewed from the mysterious herbs in her garden. She still bore the reputation, bestowed half in fear, half in derision, of "a conjure woman," and not a negro in the county would have offended her. Though there was a growing scepticism concerning her ability to "throw spells" or work love charms, even Mrs. Oakley admitted her success in removing moles and warts and in making cows go dry at the wrong season. She was a tall, straight negress, with a dark wrinkled face, in which a brooding look rippled like moonlight on still water, and hair as scant and grey as lichen on an old stump. Her dress of purple calico was stiffly starched, and she wore a decent bonnet of black straw which had once belonged to Mrs. Oakley. The stock she came of was a good one, for, as a slave, she had belonged to the Cumberlands, who had owned Honeycomb Farm before it was divided. Though that prosperous family had "run to seed" and finally disappeared, the slaves belonging to it had sprung up thriftily, in freedom, on innumerable patches of rented ground. The Greens, with the Moodys and Plumtrees, represented the coloured aristocracy of Pedlar's Mill; and Micajah Green, Aunt Mehitable's eldest son, had recently bought from Nathan Pedlar the farm he had worked, with intelligence and industry, as a tenant.
"I hope you didn't walk over here," said Dorinda, for Whistling Spring was five miles away, on the other side of the Greylocks' farm, beyond Whippernock River.