“Why, Mrs. Haggis,” said Mallie, “you don’t look strong enough to do so much work; you’re wearing yourself out cleaning like this.”
The woman sighed. “’Pears like when I don’t work, I git ter studyin’ ’bout the chil’ren—I’ve buried seven of ’em. That’s when we lived over in the fur aidge o’ Jackson County. Thar’s only three left ’sides Elam; two are up in Indiany—married—an’ Rodie’s man works the college farm below here. I don’t see her none too often; she helps tend the crap.”
The bushes and saplings hedged their path for several rods, then they came to a tumble of rocks on the very edge of the cliff. A skeleton pine whose roots still clung in the crevices, between the rocks, stood out bare and white. At its base was a windlass, and to the bare trunk were attached wires which slanted down into the treetops below. Mrs. Haggis fastened the pail the girls had brought to the upper wire—a block of wood and a pulley kept it upright—and started it on its way.
“My,” exclaimed Mallie, looking down at the tops of the tulip trees, “it’s a long way to go for water. Is there a spring at the bottom?”
“Yes, nigh fourteen hundred feet down,” said Mrs. Haggis. “You-all hang onto Elam, he’s crazy ter look over the aidge o’ things.”
“Let us do it,” protested Nancy Jane, alternately watching the slender, bent figure and the pail bobbing down the wire.
“’Tain’t nothin’, doin’ this; hit’s the washin’ wears me out.”
“You don’t mean you, have to pull it all up from down there and then carry it to the house?” Mallie inquired in astonishment.
“What I can’t ketch when hit rains. Where’d ye think I got hit?”
“I didn’t think,” said Mallie soberly, tugging at Elam. “You say your daughter comes up this way. I wonder if we couldn’t find the path and go to her house some time?”