Fletcher lifted a cup from the table and brought it over to the bed.
"Maybe you'd like a sip of this beef tea now," he suggested persuasively. "It's most time for your medicine, you know, so jest a little taste of this beforehand."
"I don't like it, grandpa; it's too salt."
"Thar, now, that's jest like Saidie," blurted Fletcher angrily.
"Saidie, you've gone and made his beef tea too salt."
Miss Saidie appeared instantly at the door of the adjoining room, and without seeking to diminish the importance of her offense, mildly offered to prepare a fresh bowl of the broth.
"I'm packing Maria's clothes now," she said, "but I'll be through in a jiffy, and then I'll make the soup. I've jest fixed up the parlour for the marriage. Maria insists on having a footstool to kneel on—she ain't satisfied with jest standing with jined hands before the preacher, like her pa and ma did before she was born."
"Well, drat Maria's whims," retorted Fletcher impatiently; "they can wait, I reckon, and Will's got to have his tea, so you'd better fetch it."
"But I don't want it, grandpa," protested the boy, flushed and troubled. "You worry me so, that's all. Please stop fooling with those curtains. I like the sunshine."
"A nap is what he needs, I suspect," observed Carraway, touched, in spite of himself, by the lumbering misery of the man.
"Ah, that's it," agreed Fletcher, catching readily at the