Joe came along after Isom in a little while, slipping his suspenders over his lank shoulders as he went out of the kitchen door. He did not turn to Ollie with the morning’s greetings, but held his face from her and hurried on, she thought, as if ashamed.
Ollie ran to the door on her nimble toes, the dawn of a smile on her face, now rosy with its new light, and looked after him as he hurried away in the brightening day. She 43 stood with her hands clasped in attitude of pleasure, again lifting her face as if to speed a prayer.
“Oh, thank God for a man!” said she.
Isom was in a crabbed way at breakfast, sulky and silent. But his evil humor did not appear to weigh with any shadow of trouble on Joe, who ate what was set before him like a hungry horse and looked around for more.
Ollie’s interest in Joe was acutely sharpened by the incident of rising. There must be something uncommon, indeed, in a lad of Joe’s years, she thought, to enable him to meet and pass off such a serious thing in that untroubled way. As she served the table, there being griddle-cakes of cornmeal that morning to flank the one egg and fragments of rusty bacon each, she studied the boy’s face carefully. She noted the high, clear forehead, the large nose, the fineness of the heavy, black hair which lay shaggy upon his temples. She studied the long hands, the grave line of his mouth, and caught a quick glimpse now and then of his large, serious gray eyes.
Here was an uncommon boy, with the man in him half showing; Isom was right about that. Let it be blood or what it might, she liked him. Hope of the cheer that he surely would bring into that dark house quickened her cheek to a color which had grown strange to it in those heavy months.
Joe’s efforts in the field must have been highly satisfactory to Isom that forenoon, for the master of the house came to the table at dinner-time in quite a lively mood. The morning’s unpleasantness seemed to have been forgotten. Ollie noticed her husband more than once during the meal measuring Joe’s capabilities for future strength with calculating, satisfied eyes. She sat at the table with them, taking minute note of Joe at closer range, studying him curiously, awed a little by the austerity of his young face, 44 and the melancholy of his eyes, in which there seemed to lie the concentrated sorrow of many forebears who had suffered and died with burdens upon their hearts.
“Couldn’t you manage to pick us a mess of dandelion for supper, Ollie?” asked Isom. “I notice it’s comin’ up thick in the yard.”
“I might, if I could find the time,” said Ollie.
“Oh, I guess you’ll have time enough,” said Isom, severely.