He pondered awhile, his slow, farmer comprehension of the situation dropping back into the material rut, in which his life had flowed like muddy water. “Which of the milk pans is to be skimmed to-night, Esther?”
“I marked them for you,” she replied stiffly. “And the cooked stuff is on the swing shelf in the suller-way. Doughnuts and cookies in the stun’ jar ’side of the flour barrel in the but’ry.”
The lawyer had been scowling at the peering heads in the window. “Esther,” he broke in, “I want you and ’Caje both to come over to your house and sit down. I’ll venture to say that we can get at a more sensible arrangement than all this amounts to.”
“You’re up to your old tricks again, Squire!” she cried sarcastically. “There are some folks that you can wind ’round your little finger, and some you can’t, and I’m”—she patted her flat breast—“one with too stiff a backbone to be wound.” She whirled on her heel and went into the house, slamming the door spitefully.
The Squire gazed at the farmer with a flicker of sympathy in his eyes.
“Go home and do your chores, ’Caje,” he commanded gruffly, “and be at the school house this evening.”
At that moment the master of the house issued from a side door with his milk pails on his arm, and started for the barn, wearing a fine assumption of innocent obliviousness.
“Oh, I. say, Uncle Paul,” called the lawyer, “what is the hour set for the lynching this evening?”
“Lynchin’!” repeated the astonished man.
“Well, perhaps I don’t pick exactly the right word—-inquisition might hit it nearer. At the school house, I mean!”