“There, it’s out. Needn’t hop up like that, mad as a hornet, at me. I’m not the one hints and shrugs. It’s the whole lot of your precious ‘boys’––boys; indeed! and needing spanking more’n they ever did in their lives.”
Jessica’s swift pacing of the wide porch came to a sudden halt, and she dropped down again at Mrs. Benton’s feet, feeling as if the floor had given way beneath her tread.
“This, then, was what my mother meant, that very day when I came back, that Ephraim was happier where he was! The dear old fellow; thrown to the street by his graceless Stiffleg; picked up with a leg full of broken bones; a prisoner in a hospital all these weeks; giving all his savings of years to us; and the ‘boys’ he’s lived with since before I was born accusing him of––theft! Aunt Sally, it’s too monstrous to be true!”
“’Tis, indeedy. Seem’s if the Evil One had been let loose, here at Sobrante, when the word of a half-wit––poor half, at that––is held proof against the entire life of an honest old man.”
Aunt Sally was so deeply moved that, for once, she allowed herself a moment’s respite from unceasing industry, unconsciously holding a patchwork block to her moist eyes, and slowly swaying the great rocker as she sorrowfully reflected that:
“I raised him the best I could, that boy John. I gave him a pill once a week, regular, to keep his bile down. I washed him every Saturday night and spanked him after I got through. I never let him eat butter when he had gravy, and I made him say his prayers night and morning. I had a notion that such wholesome rearin’ would turn him out a decent man; and now, just see!”
In spite of her own distress, Jessica laughed.
“Aunt Sally, if anybody but yourself hinted that John wasn’t a ‘decent’ man you’d do something dreadful to punish the slanderer.”
“Suppose I should? Wouldn’t I have a right? Ain’t he my own?”