“I’ve been savin’ that ham up for you, Ollie. I think it’s just about right now,” said he.
“That was nice of you, Isom,” said she, moved out of her settled taciturnity by his little show of thought for her, “I’ve been just dying for a piece of ham!”
“Well, fry us a big skilletful of it, and some eggs along with it, and fetch up a crock of sweet milk, and stir it up cream and all,” directed Isom.
Poor Ollie, overwhelmed by the suddenness and freedom of this generosity, stood staring at him, her eyes round, her lips open. Isom could not have studied a more astounding surprise. If he had hung diamonds on her neck, rubies on her wrists, and garnets in her hair, she could quicker have found her tongue.
“It’s all right, Ollie, it’s all right,” said Isom pettishly. “We’re going to have these things from now on. Might as 52 well eat ’em, and git some of the good of what we produce, as let them city people fatten off ’em.”
Isom went out with that, and Ollie attacked the ham with the butcher knife in a most savage and barbarous fashion.
Isom’s old wife must have shifted in her grave at sight of the prodigal repast which Ollie soon spread on the kitchen table. Granting, of course, that people in their graves are cognizant of such things, which, according to this old standard of comparison in human amazement, they must be.
But whether the old wife turned over or lay quiescent in the place where they put her when they folded her tired old hands upon her shrunken breast, it is indisputable that the new one eased the pangs of many a hungry day in that bountiful meal. And Joe’s face glowed from the fires of it, and his eyes sparkled in the satisfaction of his long-abused stomach.
Next day a more startling thing happened. Twice each week there passed through the country, from farm to farm, a butcher’s wagon from Shelbyville, the county-seat, a few miles away. Isom Chase never had been a customer of the fresh meat purveyor, and the traveling merchant, knowing from the old man’s notoriety that he never could expect him to become one, did not waste time in stopping at his house. His surprise was almost apoplectic when Isom stopped him and bought a soup-bone, and it almost became fatal when the order was made a standing one. It was such a remarkable event that the meat man told about it at every stop. It went round the country like the news of a wedding or a death.
Isom seemed to be satisfied with the new dietary regulations, for hams were cheap that summer, anyhow, and the season was late. Besides that, the more that Joe ate the harder he worked. It seemed a kind of spontaneous effort on the lad’s part, as if it was necessary to burn up the energy in surplus of the demand of his growing bone and muscle. 53