“There’s your Ma,” I whispered to Marcellus, assuming that he would share my surprise at her rushing off like this, instead of waiting to say “How-d’-do” to Serena. He only nodded knowingly, and said nothing.
No one else said much of anything. Myron and Warren shook hands in stiff solemnity with the veiled and craped sister-in-law, when their father had helped her and her daughter from the buggy, and one of them remarked in a constrained way that the hot spell seemed to keep up right along. The newcomers ascended the steps to the open door, and the woman and the child went inside. Old Arphaxed turned on the threshold, and seemed to behold us for the first time.
“After you’ve put out the horse,” he said, “I want the most of yeh to come up to the new barn. Si Hummaston and Marcellus can do the milkin’.”
“I kind o’ rinched my wrist this forenoon,” put in Si, with a note of entreaty in his voice. He wanted sorely to be one of the party at the red barn.
“Mebbe milkin’ ’ll be good for it,” said Arphaxed, curtly. “You and Marcellus do what I say, and keep Sidney with you.” With this he, too, went into the house.
II
It wasn’t an easy matter for even a member of the family like myself to keep clearly and untangled in his head all the relationships which existed under this patriarchal Turnbull roof.
Old Arphaxed had been married twice. His first wife was the mother of two children, who grew up, and the older of these was my father, Wilbur Turnbull. He never liked farm-life, and left home early, not without some hard feeling, which neither father nor son ever quite forgot. My father made a certain success of it as a business man in Albany until, in the thirties, his health broke down. He died when I was seven and, although he left some property, my mother was forced to supplement this help by herself going to work as forewoman in a large store. She was too busy to have much time for visiting, and I don’t think there was any great love lost between her and the people on the farm; but it was a good healthy place for me to be sent to when the summer vacation came, and withal inexpensive, and so the first of July each year generally found me out at the homestead, where, indeed, nobody pretended to be heatedly fond of me, but where I was still treated well and enjoyed myself. This year it was understood that my mother was coming out to bring me home later on.