‘Twas better that this calendar was crossed
With note:—“By order of J. Brown nol pressed.”
That’s how it’s been with her ever sence she come to,” said Mrs. Arad Tolman, with a jab of her head toward the closed door of an inner room. There were moanings and cries on the other side of the door as incoherent as the laments of an animal in distress.
Mrs. Tolman was busy over a brew of herbs that simmered in a little saucepan on the Kleber Willard cook stove. Ranged around the kitchen walls sat men and women. Some of the folks in the yard had hurried home when the tempest broke. Others had taken shelter in the house, making the storm an excuse for their curiosity.
“Sylvene and the Squire is doin’ what they can with her,” went on Mrs. Tolman, stirring at the brew, “but she is in a turrible to-do, now I can tell you! She don’t seem to mind the tunk on her head. That ain’t’ her lamentation. But the way she’s takin’ on about them childern is enough to melt a heart of stone. It was the first thing she began dingin’ away about when she come to—just as if she smelt trouble in the air.”
“What’s been told her about the childern?” inquired Marriner Amazeen, gazing at the closed door with pity on his seamed face.
“Only that they’ve been took care of at the neighbour’s till mornin’. But you can’t stuff that excuse down a mother’s thro’t. Talkin’ and tellin’ don’t fool ’em.”
“They’ve gone to Kingdom Come in that old dory, along with the Judge, and she senses it,” said Uncle Buck, from his corner. “Them sensin’s is mysterious, but they’re so.”
The lightnings were now fluttering in far-flung sheets that lit up the kitchen windows palely. The worst of the tempest was over. But the wind bellowed without and the rain sprayed fiercely upon the dripping panes.
“First it’s the childern and then it’s whiff over and a-takin’ on about Klebe—‘poor, darlin’ Klebe,’ she calls him, ‘out there in the storm and the rain.’ Well, I’d poor darlin’ a man o’ mine that fetched me a clip like that and then run away.”