“I never saw him before today, I don’t know his folks,” said she, apparently little interested in her husband’s find.
Isom sat silent for a while, looking at the worn floor.
“Well, he’s bound out to me for two years and more,” said he, the comfort of it in his hard, plain face. “I’ll have a steady hand that I can depend on now. That’s a boy that’ll do his duty; no doubt in my mind about that. It may go against the grain once in a while, Ollie, like our duty does for all of us sometimes; but, no matter how it tastes to him, that boy Joe, he’ll face it.
“He’s not one of the kind that’ll shirk on me when my back’s turned, or steal from me if he gets a chance, or betray any trust I put in him. He’s as poor as blue-John and as proud as Lucifer, but he’s as straight as the barrel of that old gun. He’s got Kentucky blood in him, and the best of it, too.”
“He brought a funny little Bible with him,” said Ollie in low voice, as if communing with herself.
“Funny?” said Isom. “Is that so?”
“So little and fat,” she explained. “I never saw one like it before. It was there on the bench this morning with his bundle. I put it up by his bed.”
“Hum-m,” said Isom reflectively, as if considering it deeply. Then: “Well, I guess it’s all right.”
Isom sat a good while, fingering his stiff beard. He gave no surface indication of the thoughts which were working 35 within him, for he was unlike those sentimental, plump, thin-skinned people who cannot conceal their emotions from the world. Isom might have been dreaming of gain, or he might have been contemplating the day of loss and panic, for all that his face revealed. Sun and shadow alike passed over it, as rain and blast and summer sun pass over and beat upon a stone, leaving no mark behind save in that slow and painful wear which one must live a century to note. He looked up at his wife at length, his hand still in his beard, and studied her silently.
“I’m not a hard man, Ollie, like some people give me the name of being,” he complained, with more gentleness in his voice than she had heard since he was courting her. He still studied her, as if he expected her to uphold common report and protest that he was hard and cruel-driving in his way. She said nothing; Isom proceeded to give himself the good rating which the world denied.