And she said, “I’ve often wondered.”
“There’s a secret room in the loft of the captain’s wing; it’s a child’s room.”
“You don’t say!”
“That’s why he wouldn’t ask any men to help him build it.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
She bore with me in that patient way which country women have of greeting life, expecting nothing and counting extraordinary circumstances as merely phases of the conditions they have always known. Something like children, to whom all things are strange and equally incredible.
“How many have you in that poke?” she changed the subject. And when I held up the juice-stained bag to show her, “We’ll keep on till we get a gallon.”
We said no more, and nothing was heard but the thud of the beach-plums as the fruit fell into her pail. I was so drowsy I did not pick very fast.
“I bet they hated each other,” Mrs. Dove said, unexpectedly.
I had been thinking about Mattie and the New Captain, too; I thought of little else. But the intensity of her remark, coming as it did out of nothing and cutting the still afternoon like a curse, surprised me.