Katharine listened, astonished, then exclaimed:
"Why—I thought he was your 'hired man.' That's servant, isn't it?"
"About the same thing, my dear," answered Miss Maitland, smiling ever so slightly, and quite conscious that Susanna's black eyes and keen ears were alert for her reply.
"But he called you by your first name! just as if he were your brother, or—or—somebody."
"There is little giving of titles in Marsden, Katharine, but that does not imply any lack of respect. Moses and Susanna and I were schoolmates together in the little red schoolhouse at the crossroads, and none of us—none of us—wish to forget it. The same old schoolhouse where your father learned his letters, and where you will go if you are happy enough with me to remain. Now, Widow Sprigg, let John's little girl see what sort of a supper you used to fix for him when he was hungry."
All fancied slight at the term "servant" thus atoned for by the formal "Widow Sprigg," and her favor swiftly won by Kate's behavior with the trunk, the housekeeper departed in high good-humor, her cap-strings flying, spectacles pushed to the top of her head, and cheerily remarking:
"So she shall, so she shall. I'll show her. For Johnny was the boy to eat an' enj'y his victuals. 'Twas a comfort to cook for him, he was that hearty. I'll have it ready in the jerk of a lamb's tail."
Moses came down the stairs and went out "to do his chores," casting another keen glance at the stranger ascending them with Miss Maitland to the sitting-room chamber. For the girl's marked resemblance to a boy he had known and taken fishing many a time, he was inclined to like her; but because of the probable altered household life, and her swift perception of his whimsies, equally inclined to dislike; and he shifted the straw from one side of his mouth to the other, reflecting:
"Well, it's more'n likely she an' Eunice won't gee. Eunice has raised six seven of her folkses' childern, an' I 'lowed she'd got done; but there ain't no accountin' for silly women—silly women. Get out, there, you! Strange that a body can't leave a gate open a single minute here in Marsden village, without somebody's stray cattle trespassin'. Get out, I say!"
The plump white cow, which had obtruded its nose through the gateway, calmly withdrew it and proceeded on its way undisturbed by Moses' frantic gestures. Miss Maitland's was not the only dooryard in the village where grass was still abundant, and Whitey knew it.