"Well, I never!" exclaimed Cynthia, bending over to examine the break with her near-sighted squint. "We'll soon have to begin using Aunt Susannah's set, if this keeps up. Uncle Boaz, you've broken another cup to-day."
Her tone was sharp with irritation, and the fine wrinkles caused by ceaseless small worries appeared instantly between her eyebrows. Christopher, watching her, remembered that she had worn the same expression during the scene with Lila, and it annoyed him unspeakably that she should be able to descend so readily, and with equal energy, upon so insignificant a grievance as a bit of broken china.
Uncle Boaz hobbled round the table and peered contemptuously at the cup which Lila held.
"Dar warn' no use bruckin' dat ar one," he observed, "'caze 'twuz bruck a'ready." " Oh, there won't be a piece left presently," pursued Cynthia indignantly; and Christopher felt suddenly that there was something contemptible in the passion she expended upon trifles. He wondered if Tucker noticed how horribly petty it all was to lament a broken cup when the tears were hardly dried on Lila's cheeks. Finishing hurriedly, he pushed back his chair and rose from the table, shaking his head in response to Cynthia's request that he should go in to see his mother. "Not now," he said impatiently, with that nervous avoidance of the person he loved best. "I'll be back in time to carry her to bed, but I've got to take a half-hour off and look in on Tom Spade." "She really ought to go to bed before sundown," responded Cynthia, "but nothing under heaven will persuade her to do so. It's her wonderful will that keeps her alive, just as it keeps her sitting bolt upright in that old chair. I don't believe there's another woman on earth who could have done it for more than twenty years." Taking down his hat from a big nail in the wall, Christopher stood for a moment abstractedly fingering the brim. "Well, I'll be back shortly," he said at last, and went out hurriedly into the darkness. At the instant he could not tell why he had so suddenly decided to follow Will Fletcher to the store, but, as usual, when the impulse came to him he proceeded to act promptly as it directed. Strangely enough, the boy was the one human being whom he felt no inclination to avoid, and the least oppressive moments that he knew were the reckless ones they spent together. While his daily companion was mentally and morally upon a lower plane than his own, the association was not without a balm for his wounded pride; and the knowledge that it was still possible to assume superiority to Fletcher's heir was, so far as he himself admitted, the one consolation that his life contained. As for his feeling toward Will Fletcher as an individual, it was the outcome of so curious a mixture of attraction and repulsion that he had long ceased from any attempt to define it as pure emotion. For the last four years the boy had been, as Tom Spade put it, "the very shadow on the man's footsteps," and yet at the end of that time it was almost impossible for Christopher to acknowledge either his liking or his hatred. He had suffered him for his own end, that was all, and he had come at last almost to enjoy the tolerance that he displayed. The hero worship—the natural imitation of youth— was at least not unpleasant, and there had been days during a brief absence of the boy when Christopher had, to his surprise, become aware of a positive vacancy in his surroundings. So long as Will made no evident attempt to rise above him—so long, indeed, as Fletcher's grandson kept to Fletcher's level, it was possible that the companionship would continue as harmoniously as it had begun. In the store he found Tom Spade and his wife—an angular, strong-featured woman, in purple calico, who carried off the reputation of a shrew with noisy honours. When he asked for Will, the storekeeper turned from the cash-drawer which he was emptying and nodded toward the half-open door of the adjoining room.
"Several of the young fellows are in thar now," he remarked offhand, "an' I've jest had to go in an' git between Fred Turner an' Will Fletcher. They came to out an' out blows, an' I had to shake 'em both by the scuff of thar necks befo' they'd hish
snarlin'. Bless yo' life, all about a woman, too, every last word of it. Well, well, meanin' no disrespect to you, Susan, it's a queer thing that a man can't be born, married, or buried without a woman gittin' herself mixed up in the business. If she ain't wrappin' you in swaddlin' bands, you may be sho' she's measurin' off yo' windin'-sheet. Mark my words, Mr. Christopher, I don't believe thar's ever been a fight fought on this earth—be it a battle or a plain fisticuff—that it warn't started in the brain of somebody's mother, wife, or sweetheart an' it's most likely to have been the sweetheart. It is strange, when you come to study 'bout it, how sech peaceable-lookin' creaturs as women kin have sech hearty appetites for trouble."
"Well, trouble may be born of a woman, but it generally manages to take the shape of a man," observed Mrs. Spade from behind the counter, where she was filling a big glass jar with a fresh supply of striped peppermint candy. "And as far as that goes, ever sence the Garden of Eden, men have taken a good deal mo' pleasure in layin' the blame on thar wives than they do in layin' blows on the devil. It's a fortunate woman that don't wake up the day after the weddin' an' find she's married an Adam instid of a man. However, they are as the Lord made 'em, I reckon," she finished charitably, "which ain't so much to thar credit as it sounds, seein' they could have done over sech a po' job with precious little trouble."
"Oh, I warn't aimin' at you, Susan," Tom hastened to assure her, aware from experience that he entered an argument only to be worsted. "You've been a good wife to me, for all yo' sharp tongue, an' I've never had to git up an' light the fire sence the day I married you. Yes, you've been a first-rate wife to me, an' no mistake."
"I'm the last person you need tell that to," was Mrs. Spade's retort. "I don't reckon I've b'iled inside an' sweated outside for mo' than twenty years without knowin' it. Lord! Lord! If it took as hard work to be a Christian as it does to be a wife, thar'd be mighty few but men in the next world—an' they'd git thar jest by followin' like sheep arter Adam—"
"I declar', Susan, I didn't mean to rile you," urged Tom, breaking in upon the flow of words with an appealing effort to divert its course. "I was merely crackin' a joke with Mr. Christopher, you know."