Aunt Kate came slowly over with the boy and laid a hand on Cassy’s shoulder, for there was an undercurrent to the conversation which boded no good. The very first words uttered had plunged Abel Baragar and his son’s wife into the midst of the difficulty which she had hoped might, after all, be avoided.
“Come, and I’ll show you your room, Cassy,” she said. “It faces south, and you’ll get the sun all day. It’s like a sun-parlor. We’re going to have supper in a couple of hours, and you must rest some first. Is the house warm enough for you?”
The little, garish woman did not reply directly, but shook back her red hair and caught her boy to her breast and kissed him; then she said, in that staccato manner which had given her words on the stage such point and emphasis: “Oh, this house is a’most too warm for me, Aunt Kate!”
Then she moved toward the door with the grave, kindly old woman, her son’s hand in her own.
“You can see the Lumleys’ place from your window, Cassy,” said Black Andy, grimly. “We got a mortgage on it, and foreclosed it, and it’s ours now; and Jerry Lumley’s stock-riding for us. Anyhow, he’s better off than Abner, or Abner’s wife.”
Cassy turned at the door and faced him. Instinctively she caught at some latent conflict with old Abel Baragar in what Black Andy had said, and her face softened, for it suddenly flashed into her mind that he was not against her.
“I’m glad to be back West,” she said. “It meant a lot to me when I was at Lumley’s.” She coughed a little again, but turned to the door with a laugh.
“How long have you come to stay here—out West?” asked the old man, furtively.
“Oh, there’s plenty of time to think of that!” she answered, brusquely, and she heard Black Andy laugh derisively as the door closed behind her.