“No, I haven’t seen it, Joe,” she answered, the color leaving her cheeks.
“All right, Ollie,” said he, holding her eyes with steady gaze, until she shifted hers under the pain of it, and the questioning reproach. 78
Joe slammed down the lid of the tool-chest, as if with the intention of making as much noise as possible.
There was something in the way he had spoken her name that was stranger than the circumstance itself. Perhaps she felt the authority and the protection which Joe meant that his voice should assume; perhaps she understood that it was the word of a man. She was afraid of him at that moment, as she never had been afraid of Isom in all their married life.
“I suppose Isom put it away somewhere around the barn,” said Joe.
“Maybe he did, Joe.”
“I’ll go down there and see if I can find it,” he said.
Ollie knew, as well as Joe himself, that he was making the whetstone the vehicle to carry his excuse for watching Morgan away from the farm, but she was not certain whether this sudden shrewdness was the deep understanding of a man, or the domineering spirit of a crude lad, jealous of his passing authority.
The uncertainty troubled her. She watched him from the door and saw him approach Morgan, where he was backing his horse into the shafts.
“All right, is he?” asked Joe, stopping a moment.