“Maybe,” said Ollie, and both of them had their laugh again.
Joe moved on the bench, making it creak, an uneasy feeling coming over him. Close as Isom was, and hard-handed and mean, Joe felt that there was a certain indelicacy in his wife’s discussion of his traits with a stranger.
Ollie had cleared away the dishes, washed them and placed them in the cupboard, on top of which the one clock of that household stood, scar-faced, but hoarse-voiced when it struck, and strong as the challenge of an old cock. Already it had struck nine, for they had been late in coming to supper, owing to Joe’s long set-to with his conscience at the edge of the hazel-copse in the woods.
Joe got up, stretching his arms, yawning.
“Goin’ to bed, heh?” asked Morgan.
“No, I don’t seem to feel sleepy tonight,” Joe replied.
He went into the kitchen and sat at the table, his elbows on the board, his head in his hands, as if turning over some difficult problem in his mind. Presently he fell to raking his shaggy hair with his long fingers; in a moment it was as disorderly as the swaths of clover hay lying out in the moonlight in the little stone-set field.
Morgan had filled his pipe, and was after a match at the box behind the stove, with the familiarity of a household inmate. He winked at Ollie, who was then pulling down her sleeves, her long day’s work being done.
“Well, do you think you’ll be elected?” he asked, lounging across to Joe, his hands in his pockets.
Morgan wore a shirt as gay-striped as a Persian tent, and he had removed his coat so the world, or such of it as was present in the kitchen, might behold it and admire. Joe withdrew his hands from his forelock and looked at Morgan 87 curiously. The lad’s eyes were sleep-heavy and red, and he was almost as dull-looking, perhaps, as Morgan imagined him to be.