“How has it worked out?” Northrup heard the words as if another spoke them.
“I guess, friend, that’s what no one actually knows.” Peter pulled on his pipe. “Larry is on and off. Maclin, over to the mines, seems to do the ordering of Larry’s coming and going. Darned funny business, I say. However, there you are. When Larry is home I guess the way Mary-Clare holds her head and laughs gets on his nerves. No man likes to feel that he can’t clutch hold of his wife, but it comes to that, say what you will, Mary-Clare keeps free of things in a mighty odd fashion; I mean the real part of her; the other part goes regular enough.
“She don’t slacken up on her plain duty. What the ole Doc left she shares right enough with Larry; she keeps the house like it should be kept, and she’s a good second to Polly here, where fodder is concerned. But something happened when Larry was last home that leaked out somehow. A girl called Jan-an let it slip. Not a quarrel exactly, but a thing that wasn’t rightfully settled. Larry was ordered off, sudden, by Maclin, but take it from me, when Larry comes back he’ll get his innings. Larry isn’t what you could call a sticker, but he gets there all the same. He ain’t going to let any woman go too far with him. That’s where Larry comes out strong––with women.”
“I don’t know as you ought to talk so free, brother.” Polly looked dubious.
“In the meantime,” Northrup said quietly, “the little wife lives alone in the yellow house, waiting?” He hadn’t heard Polly’s caution.
He was thinking of Mary-Clare’s look when she confronted him the day of his coming. Was she expecting her husband? Had she learned to love him? Was she that kind of woman? The kind that thrives on neglect and indifference?
“Not alone, as you might say,” Heathcote’s voice drawled. “There’s Noreen, her little girl, you know. Noreen seems at times to be about a thousand years older than her mother, but by actual count she’s going on six, ain’t that it, Polly?”
Again Northrup felt as he had that day by the lightning-shattered tree.
“Her little girl?” he asked slowly, and Aunt Polly raised her eyes to his face. She looked troubled, vaguely uneasy.