Jan-an continued to stare at him.
“There ain’t no Mrs. Sniff” she said finally. “What’s ailin’ folks around here?”
“Well, where’s Miss Peneluna?” Larry ventured, thinking back to the old title of his boyhood days.
“Setting!” Jan-an returned to her sweeping and Larry stepped aside.
“I want to see her,” he said angrily. “Get out of the way.”
“She ain’t no great sight, and I’m cleaning up!” Jan-an scowled and her energy suggested that Larry might soon be included among the things she was getting rid of.
“See here”––Larry’s eyes darkened––“if you don’t stand aside–––”
But at this juncture Peneluna loomed in the doorway. She regarded Larry with a tightening of the mouth muscles. Inwardly she thought of him as a bad son of a good father, but intuitions were not proofs and because Doctor Rivers had been good, and Mary-Clare was always to be considered, the old woman kept her feelings to herself.
She was still in her rusty black, the rakish bonnet set awry on her head.
“Come in!” she said quietly. “And you, Jan-an, you trundle over to my old place and clean up.”