“I’ll handle him in my own way,” with portentous significance; “but I want you to understand my rights fully at the start.”
“Yes, sir,” she answered meekly.
Joe was coming now, pitchfork over his shoulder, from the field where he had been burning corn-stalks, making ready 14 for the plow. She hastened to set out a basin of water on the bench beside the kitchen door, and turned then into the room to light the lamp and place it on the waiting table.
Joe appeared at the door, drying his hands on the dangling towel. He was a tall, gaunt-faced boy, big-boned, raw-jointed, the framework for prodigious strength. His shoulders all but filled the narrow doorway, his crown came within an inch of its lintel. His face was glowing from the scrubbing which he had given it with home-made lye soap, his drenched hair fell in heavy locks down his deep forehead.
“Well, Mother, what’s happened?” he asked, noting her uneasiness as she sat waiting him at the table, the steaming coffee-pot at her hand.
“Sit down and start your supper, son, and we’ll talk as we go along,” said she.
Joe gave his hair a “lick and a promise” with the comb, and took his place at the table. Mrs. Newbolt bent her head and pronounced the thanksgiving which that humble board never lacked, and she drew it out to an amazing and uncomfortable length that evening, as Joe’s impatient stomach could bear clamorous witness.
Sarah Newbolt had a wide fame as a religious woman, and a woman who could get more hell-fire into her belief and more melancholy pleasure out of it than any hard-shell preacher in the land. It was a doleful religion, with little promise or hope in it, and a great deal of blood and suffering between the world and its doubtful reward; but Sarah Newbolt lived according to its stern inflexibility, and sang its sorrowful hymns by day, as she moved about the house, in a voice that carried a mile. But for all the grimness in her creed, there was not a being alive with a softer heart. She would have divided her last square of corn-bread with the wayfarer at her door, without question of his worth or unworthiness, his dissension, or his faith. 15
“Mr. Chase was here this afternoon, Joe,” said she as the lad began his supper.
“Well, I suppose he’s going to put us out?”