Till it was supper-time she sat in absolute silence beside the sitting-room window, her eyes fixed upon vacancy, and an expression of great perplexity.
Katharine bore this as long as she could, then stole softly up to the hired man's room, careless whether he were asleep or not. She had not been bidden to secrecy, and, finding him awake, she poured out the story of the afternoon so fast that her words fairly tripped each other up. Then Moses made her go back and tell it all over again, and when she had finished, exclaimed:
"Beats thunder! A silly woman! An' me, a man! Bedrid here, like an old block of wood, an' her—She thinks she's arrested somebody, Susanna does! She thinks she's made herself into a constable, does she? Turned her house into a jail—an' forgot to fasten the winders outside! Ho! Ho! Silly women!"
The disappointed old fellow got as much enjoyment as he could out of the situation, and was more than delighted by thought of a tramp's shoes smirching the log-cabin quilt. It served the widow right, he maintained, because she had wasted so much labor on the thing. "Bought good new Merrimac print, she did, an' then set there o' nights a snip-snip-snippin' it up into little scraps an' sewin' 'em together again. If a woman'll do that, it's proof what sort o' brains she's got." Then, with sudden energy, he advised: "Don't you never let her set you a sewin' patchwork, Kitty Keehoty. It's all on a piece with knittin' mittens for the Hottentots—a waste of time. A waste o' sinful time, I mean a sinful waste of—Oh, hum!"
She waited till he had cooled off from his own vexation, and then asked:
"Uncle Moses, will you tell me all about Montgomery's father?"
If she had surprised him before she startled him now. Flashing his keen old eyes upon her, he asked in return:
"Why do you want to know? Who egged you on to say that?"
"Nobody. Why, surely, nobody at all. But it seems so queer that none talk of him, yet of his mother speak so often and so lovingly. Aunt Eunice says she was a Marsden lady, a farmer's daughter, and 'as lovely as a flower.' Even Madam, who didn't like her at first, grew to be fond of her and to call her 'my sweet daughter.' But when I asked Monty of his father, and had told him all about mine, about everything, about the second Mrs. John, the Snowballs, and all—he just said: 'I guess I'll go hunt old Whitey,' and off he went, without saying 'excuse me.' His face was as red as red, and there came a queer look in his eyes as if—as if he was ashamed. Was his father a wicked man, Uncle Moses?"
Quite diverted by this time from his own vexations, the hired man lay silently thinking for a moment. Then he said: