“I know your money’s long past due,” she sighed, “but if you was to give Joe another chance, Mr. Chase, we could pay you off in time.”
“Oh, another chance, another chance!” said he impatiently. “What could you do with all the chances in the world, you and him–what did your husband ever do with his chances? He had as many of ’em as I ever did, and what did he ever do but scheme away his time on fool things that didn’t pan out when he ought ’a’ been in the field! No, you and Joe couldn’t pay back that loan, ma’am, not if I was to give you forty years to do it in.”
“Well, maybe not,” said she, drawing a sigh from the well of her sad old heart. 5
“The interest ain’t been paid since Peter died, and that’s more than two years now,” said Chase. “I can’t sleep on my rights that way, ma’am; I’ve got to foreclose to save myself.”
“Yes, you’ve been easy, even if we did give you up our last cow on that there inter-est,” she allowed. “You’ve been as kind and easy over it, I reckon, Mr. Chase, as a body could be. Well, I reckon me and Joe we’ll have to leave the old place now.”
“Lord knows, I don’t see what there is to stay for!” said Chase feelingly, sweeping his eyes around the wired-up, gone-to-the-devil-looking place.
“When a body’s bore children in a place,” she said earnestly, “and nussed ’em, and seen ’em fade away and die; and when a body’s lived in a house for upward of forty years, and thought things in it, and everything––”
“Bosh!” said Isom Chase, kicking the rotting step.
“I know it’s all shacklety now,” said she apologetically, “but it’s home to me and Joe!”
Her voice trembled over the words, and she wiped her eyes with the corner of her head-shawl; but her face remained as immobile as features cast in metal. When one has wept out of the heart for years, as Sarah Newbolt had wept, the face is no longer a barometer over the tempests of the soul.