“Go on home!” cried the irate woman who faced her. “I hate ye all, ye Andy Joslins. Who air ye, anyways, to put on sech airs with me?”
But Granny Joslin did not go home for yet a while. Instead, she lighted her pipe with a coal once more, pushing it down with a horny forefinger.
“To dance through life, Meliss’,” said she, after a time, apropos of nothing apparent,—“that’s what life is fer. Ye set mopin’ and dawncey all the time—sour as a last month’s cornpone—do ye expect a man’s a-goin’ to love ye fer that? Yore old one didn’t, an’ yore new one won’t. But me—I kin dance yit!”
And suiting the action to the word, the old dame did arise, and catching her scant skirts up in either hand, executed a sturdy jig after the fashion of the olden times, stamping out the time on the puncheon floor, with an occasional exclamation of her own, whirling and turning, and now and then extending her skirts, at last snapping her fingers as she ceased. She seemed not too weary nor out of breath as she sank again into her chair.
“My God, Meliss’,” she said, “I’m glad thar’s one Joslin that’s showed hisself a man!”
She spoke to a vacant room—the other and younger woman, gone fey of her own savage humors, once more had flung from the room and was standing, hands clenched, in the yard beyond. But old Granny Joslin was not perturbed. She lighted her pipe once more and sat for a time engaged in her own thoughts as before—her eyes fixed exactly on a certain knot of a certain log in the rude wall—she voiced her own conclusions to herself.
“I was about that height my own self when I was a gal. An’ Lord! hain’t it sweet—to come just inside the arm of a strong man, Meliss’? Don’t I know?
“I was a-wonderin’ fer a while which one of them two wimmern Davy’d turn up with fustest. But, sakes! I know—he tolt me plenty, if he didn’t Meliss’. French-Irish—dark and curly-haired—big eyes, like enough—she come right under his arm when he stood up—the sort that’s sort of squushy when you hug ‘em—maybe light on her feet—laughin’, maybe! Wimmern that laughs has always got the aidge on them that cries. Why, I kin see that womern dancin’ as she goes along, alive clar down to her toes—that’s the one—you hear me now!”
And having demolished all argument on the part of the listening knot, Granny Joslin at length did knock the last ashes from her pipe, and, rising, leave the empty house and cold hearthfire of what was no longer a home.