“Well, well!” he cried, “that was a conquest. Old Jarvis, of all men! Why, Barb, you’re a wonder. Ha, ha!”
She trembled before his loud laughter as she had not beneath the weight of his displeasure.
David suddenly became grave, his brows drawn in thought.
“That puts a different face on things,” he said.
XVIII
Hewett’s general store, with its official annex, the post-office, occupied a prominent place in the social as well as the economic system of Barford. Not even the aisles, sheds, and steps of the Presbyterian church afforded so convenient and popular an arena for the interchange of items of general interest as did “Hewett’s.” There appeared to be something suggestively cheerful and enlivening in the sagging piles of fruit and vegetables, something friendly and hospitable in the boxes, barrels, and kegs open to public inspection and exploring fingers. Even the curious and all-pervasive odor compounded of prunes, pickles, yellow soap, and tobacco, with an occasional aromatic whiff of freshly ground coffee, seemed to lend itself to a pleasantly open frame of mind, conducive to an unreserved expression of opinion concerning the church, the state, and the social whirl, as evidenced in the varying currents and eddies of village life.
As in other similar emporiums devoted to the display and sale of such commodities as were in general demand “the store cat” might be seen guarding inconspicuous rat-holes, or curled up in peaceful slumber in the cracker barrel, or in close proximity to the whity-brown loaves of bread destined for private consumption and handled with easy familiarity and a total lack of ceremonial cleanliness by the driver of the baker’s cart, the Hewetts, father and son, and by such tentative customers as elected to test the freshness of the product with doubtful thumb and finger.
It was at Hewett’s, as might have been expected, that the singular event of the auction at the Preston farm had been discussed in all its different aspects. The amount of the mortgage held by Stephen Jarvis, the various expedients resorted to by the daughter of Donald Preston, and the events leading up to her desperate and successful coup had all been reviewed circumstantially and in order. The continued presence of David Whitcomb in the community furnished a welcome variation to the subject; and inasmuch as David was found not averse to talking of himself, there was little mystery about his return to Barford and its object.