His cattle were getting fairly under way by the time he reached Widow Lister’s door. He had hoped for once to escape the plump little woman whose only business in life was to stop busy men on the highway; yet he pulled up, with weary deference to habit, as he saw her lying in wait.
“So you’re not snowed in yet?” she asked.
Her slanting glance, over-coy for her years, the sleek, well-fed look of the woman, found the secret corner where Will kept his temper hidden. “You’re the hundredth,” he snapped, “and I knew I’d find the last straw nigh your door, or thereabouts. Seems to me you keep a stack of such-like straws. What is it, Widow? We’re late, and Captain is as cross as ever I saw a horse in my long time of driving.”
“Nay, ’tis the Captain’s master that’s cross. Shame on ye, Will, to be grumbling at such weather as God sends. Who are we to grumble?”
Will waited in exasperation. The widow was “nimble as a weathercock,” as he put it to himself, “and could always place a right-thinking man in the wrong.”
“What is it now?” he repeated.
“Oh, don’t be getting impatient. I only asked if ye were snowed up, or not. Surely a civil body can ask a civil question.”
“Well, I shouldn’t be here if I was, but to-morrow I may be,” he added, with cheerful malice. “I doubt, as it is, if I can get as far as Keta’s Well to-night. The drifts were six feet high up the road, so they tell me.”
“There now! If ever I want a thing, and must have it, there’s sure to be a cross. Ay, just another cross. Widows, living lonely like and helpless, were meant to bear ’em, I reckon. I was going to ask you to bring—”
For the first time in the history of Will, he did not wait for a wayside command. His feet and hands were half frozen; that mattered little; but his horses were in risk of catching a chill.