"I sho' have," he replied; "it smells like ash cakes, and I've brought a bucket of buttermilk from ole Mis' Walden's place. She certainly is a techersome woman but a powerful good manager."
"Where's the buttermilk?"
"Outside the do'!"
"Run and fetch it, Molly."
The child, glaring at Martin, sprang to do her mother's bidding and as she passed Morley he seemed to note, for the first time in his life, her fantastic beauty. And then Morley stared after her—she looked like his mother! With the thought a blush of shame rose to his thin, sallow face.
His mother! Between his mother and him lay a black abyss. What right had anything, holding part in that shadow, to look like his mother? He arose and almost snatched from the child the pail she had brought in.
"Hyar!" he cried, "let me take that, you're slopping it over the floor. Whar's yo' brother?"
With this Mary Morley turned from her task with hot, blazing face? She had been handsome once—but the fleeting beauty was gone.
"Sho'! whar's that blessed son of yours?" Mary screamed. "You better go and find out. Do you know what the brat has been doing all these years? Years, I say! While we-all have been slaving and starving he's been saving up; cheating us-all out of his earnings. Eating us-all out of house and home while he—saved and glutted!"
Martin stared at the woman as if she were speaking a foreign language.