“I want my da’ater!” insisted Jehoiada, vehemently. “I stan’ on a father’s rights.”
“A father ain’t got no more right to make a fool of himself than anybody else,” replied Abner, gravely. “What kind of a time o’ night is this, with the snow knee-deep, for a girl to be out o’ doors? She’s all right here, with my women-folks, an’ I’ll bring her down with the cutter in the mornin’—that is, if she wants to come. An’ now, once for all, will you step inside or not?”
Esther had taken up the lantern and advanced with it now to the open door. “Come in, father,” she said, in tones which seemed to be authoritative, “They’ve been very kind to me. Come in!” Then, to my surprise, the lean and scrawny figure of the cooper emerged from the darkness, and stepping high over the snow, entered the barn, Abner sending the door to behind him with a mighty sweep of the arm.
Old Hagadorn came in grumbling under his breath, and stamping the snow from his feet with sullen kicks. He bore a sledge-stake in one of his mittened hands. A worsted comforter was wrapped around his neck and ears and partially over his conical-peaked cap. He rubbed his long thin nose against his mitten and blinked sulkily at the lantern and the girl who held it.
“So here you be!” he said at last, in vexed tones. “An’ me traipsin’ around in the snow the best part of the night lookin’ for you!”
“See here, father,” said Esther, speaking in a measured, deliberate way, “we won’t talk about that at all. If a thousand times worse things had happened to both of us than have, it still wouldn’t be worth mentioning compared with what has befallen these good people here. They’ve been attacked by a mob of rowdies and loafers, and had their house and home burned down over their heads and been driven to take refuge here in this barn of a winter’s night. They’ve shared their shelter with me and been kindness itself, and now that you’re here, if you can’t think of anything pleasant to say to them, if I were you I’d say nothing at all.”
This was plain talk, but it seemed to produce a satisfactory effect upon Jehoiada. He unwound his comforter enough to liberate his straggling sandy beard and took off his mittens. After a moment or two he seated himself in the chair, with a murmured “I’m jest about tuckered out,” in apology for the action. He did, in truth, present a woeful picture of fatigue and physical feebleness, now that we saw him in repose. The bones seemed ready to start through the parchment-like skin on his gaunt cheeks, and, his eyes glowed with an unhealthy fire, as he sat, breathing hard and staring at the jumbled heaps of furniture on the floor.
Esther had put the lantern again on the box and drawn forward a chair for Abner, but the farmer declined it with a wave of the hand and continued to stand in the background, looking his ancient enemy over from head to foot with a meditative gaze. Jehoiada grew visibly nervous under this inspection; he fidgeted on his chair and then fell to coughing—a dry, rasping cough which had an evil sound, and which he seemed to make the worse by fumbling aimlessly at the button that held the overcoat collar round his throat.
At last Abner walked slowly over to the shadowed masses of piled-up household things and lifted out one of the drawers that had been taken from the framework of the bureau and brought over with their contents. Apparently it was not the right one, for he dragged aside a good many objects to get at another, and rummaged about in this for several minutes. Then he came out again into the small segment of the lantern’s radiance with a pair of long thick woollen stockings of his own in his hand.
“You better pull off them wet boots an’ draw these on,” he said, addressing Hagadorn, but looking fixedly just over his head. “It won’t do that cough o’ yours no good, settin’ around with wet feet.”