And when she did not reply, puckering her eyes and resenting his intrusive question, he suggested, more gently, “In case of alimony, you know!”
“If that’s what you’re askin’ for, I don’t know as there’s any hurt in tellin’ you we’ve got risin’ ’leven thousand, put where it’s earnin’ int’rest and twenty-five hundred out on first mo’gidges.”
“And not a chick nor a child to leave it to,” he murmured, looking at her with sudden sympathy in his eyes. “It’s too bad, Esther, that your little ’Cilia was called away to her treasures in Heaven before she could enjoy some of the treasures you heaped up on earth for her—you two, poor, tug-a-lugging old critters, you!” She sat down suddenly, and her work-stained, knotted hands trembled as she folded them on her lap.
“Saving and skinching and piling up,” he went on. “What good has it ever done you, Esther? Why didn’t you and ’Caje knock off and have a little fun together in the world before you got hardened this way? And for poor ’Cilia it was always ‘Sometime!’ till she got to be sixteen years old, and then she went on the first journey of her life—to the grave! And the only good dress she ever wore was the one you laid her out in! Do you know what animals grub and grub with their noses rooting soil?” He shouted the question at her.
She came back at him with equal fire. “When I want a sermon I’ll go to the parson! ’Tain’t any disgrace to be prudent and forehanded, is it, even if we ain’t got no one to enjoy it after we’re gone?”
Her voice broke suddenly. The tears flooded into her cold eyes.
“Oh, Squire,” she quavered, “’twould have been different with ’Caje and me if only ’Cilla’d been left to us. Hain’t neither of us knowed what to do with ourselves since we laid her away in the graveyard.”
He walked around the table and patted the shoulder bowed under the faded shawl.
“And as little as you’ve got left in the world now, Esther, here you are wanting to get rid of the biggest hunk of it. Can’t you realise that you don’t understand this thing yet? Your husband don’t know what the trouble is with him. Now let me tear up this list of ’Caje’s temporary aberrations. I’ll have a talk with him, and we’ll see—we’ll see!”
But with an angry red in her cheeks that seemed to scorch the tears there she jerked her shoulder away from his patting hand.