Giving Aunt Polly time to recover her poise, Northrup went inside. He found the small woman hovering about the room, patting the furniture, dusting it here and there with her apron. Her glasses were quite misty.
“I hope you kept your ears open,” she exclaimed when she turned to Northrup.
“I did, Aunt Polly! Come, sit down and let’s talk it over.”
Polly obeyed at once and let restraint drop.
“That man has a real terrible effect on me, son. He’s like acid sorter creeping in. I don’t suppose he could do what he hints––but his hints just naturally make me anxious.”
“He cannot get a hold on you, Aunt Polly. Surely your brother is more than a match for any one like Maclin.”
“When it comes to that, son, Peter can fight his own in the open, but he ain’t any hand to sense danger in the dark till it’s too late. Peter never can believe a fellow man is doing him a bad turn till he’s bowled over. But then,” she ran on plaintively, “it ain’t just us––Peter, Mary-Clare, and me––it’s them folks down on the Point,” the old face quivered touchingly. “The old doctor used to say it was God’s acre for the living; the old doctor would have his joke. The Point always was a mean piece of land for any regular use, but it reaches out a bit into the lake and the fishing’s good round it, and you can fasten boats to it and it’s a real safe place for old folks and children. There’s always drifting creatures wherever you may be, son, and King’s Forest has ’em, but the old doctor held as they ought to have some place to move in, if we let ’em be born. So he set aside the Point and never took anything from them, though he gave them a lot, what with doctoring and funerals. Dear, dear! there are real comical happenings at the Point. I often sit and shake over them. Real human nature down there! Mary-Clare goes down and reads the Bible to the Pointers––they just about adore her, and she wouldn’t sell them out, not for bread and butter for her very own! It’s the title as worries Peter and me, son. We’ve always known it was tricky, but, lands! we never thought it would come to arguing about and I put it to you: What does this Maclin man want of that Point?”
Northrup looked interested.
“I’m going to find out,” he said presently, feeling strangely as if he had become part and parcel of the matter. “I’m going to find out and you mustn’t worry any more, Aunt Polly. We’ll try Maclin at his own game and go him one better. He cannot account for me, I’m making him uneasy. Now you help the thing along by just squatting––that’s a good phrase of yours; one can accomplish much by just squatting on his holdings.”