“And don’t come back till spring!” she commanded.
“Spring?” Jan-an paused as she was strapping on an old pair of skates that once belonged to Philander Sniff. “Spring? Gawd!”
It was a terrific winter. The still, intense kind that grips every snowstorm as a miser does his money, hiding it in secret places of the hills where the divine warmth of the sun cannot find it.
The wind, early in November, set in the north! Occasionally the “ha’nt wind” troubled it; wailed a bit and caught the belfry bell, and then gave up and sobbed itself away.
At the inn a vague something––was it old age or lost faith?––was 251 trying to conquer Peter’s philosophy and Aunt Polly’s spiritual vision. The Thing, whatever it was, was having a tussle, but it made its marks. Peter sat oftener by the fire with Ginger edging close to the leg that the gander had once damaged and which, now, acted as an indicator for Peter’s moods. When he did not want to talk his “leg ached.” When his heart sank in despair his “leg ached.” But Polly, a little thinner, a little more dim as to far-off visions, caught every mood of Peter’s and sent it back upon him like a boomerang. She met his silent hours with such a flare of talk that Peter responded in self-defence. His black hours she clutched desperately and held them up for him to look at after she had charged them with memories of goodness and love.
As for herself? Well, Aunt Polly nourished her own brave spirit by service and an insistent, demanding cry of justice.
“’Tain’t fair and square to hold anything against the Almighty,” she proclaimed, “till you’ve given Him a chance to show what He did things for.”
Polly waxed eloquent and courageous; she kept her own faith by voicing it to others; it grew upon reiteration.
Peter was in one of his worst combinations––silence and low spirits––when Polly entered the kitchen one early afternoon. A glance at the huddling form by the red-hot range had the effect of turning Polly into steel. She looked at Ginger, who reflected his master’s moods pathetically, and her steel became iron.
“I suppose if I ask you, Peter, how you’re feeling,” she said slowly, calmly, “you’ll fling your leg in my face! It’s monstrous to see how an able-bodied man can use any old lie to save his countenance.”