She began to cry in a slow, patient way.
"It's queer I don't get used to it," she said presently, for Nate had not tried to answer, but was puffing like a locomotive over wet rails at his stub of a pipe. "I ought to by this time, but I don't. I s'pose it's because when pa's good he's real good, and so kind it makes it hurt all the more when he's off. Oh dear!" She gave a long sigh, pitifully unyouthful in its depth of misery. "I was 'most glad when ma got through with it all, and could rest and look so sort of peaceful in her coffin. But I dunno. She kept more offen me than I knew of, I guess, and it's growin' worse all the time."
Nate started up, letting his chair fall back with such force as to threaten total extinction to its legs.
"It's a sin and shame, and I know it!" he said in his deepest voice. "But you keep up your courage, Lucy. When things 'gets to the bottom they're bound to go up again, for they never stand still."
He stood up and knocked his pipe clean against the wooden chair seat with vigorous thumps that seemed to relieve him, and started towards the street.
"Where you going?" asked Lucy remonstrantly. "I didn't mean to nag at you, Nate."
"Don't I know it? And what if you did? Guess I'm big enough to stand it. You just talk to me all you feel like; but see here, little girl, I wouldn't be talkin' to nobody else—I wouldn't."
"Not to Marry?"
"Oh well, that French woman don't so much matter, 'cause most folks wouldn't understand even if she tried to tattle, and I guess she don't. But not to Mis' Hemphill—she's a most su'prisin' gossip, ye know—nor to the Murfrees, nor Flahertys, nor nobody. These is fam'ly affairs, Lucy, and they ain't for public ears. I'm going down to Lon's now, and your pa'll get home soon—very soon. I'll see to that," grimly. "Now, good night, and don't you shed another tear, will ye?"
He patted her shoulder kindly as he stepped past her, and Lucy looked up with grateful eyes.