“Who is he?” she whispered to Raphael Sloan.
“Lem Bennett,” he whispered back, “and the woman is his wife.”
X
SI QUINN REVEALS A SECRET
Only that one forenoon did Talitha hold school in the hollow. The very next day the weather took a turn, a cold wind blew up, and for more than a week a lowering sky gave promise of rain it failed to fulfil-except now and then in spiteful gusts. Her hopes, to which she had clung with a brave persistence, vanished with the sunshine.
She was greatly puzzled at the indifference her family displayed over the loss of the schoolhouse and its contents. Evidently the school must be discontinued until another year at least. It was getting too late in the season to hope for more than a few days—at a time—warm enough to hold the session out of doors. She had thought some place might be opened to her, but the cabins were small and already overcrowded. When she suggested that the children meet at her own home for a few hours each day, her parents decidedly objected. Even Dan Gooch seemed to forget his anxiety to have Billy and Sudie “git larnin’,” and, although she had offered to assist them with their lessons, along with her own brothers, they had not put in an appearance.
Now that her plans for helping the young people of Goose Creek had failed, Talitha felt more keenly than ever the disappointment of returning home. She took all the heaviest work of the household upon her strong, young shoulders. The spinning wheel whirred through the long afternoons which otherwise would have been dull and dreary enough. She had no heart to call on neighbours or kinfolk; they did not need her. Si Quinn had also lost all interest in school matters, or she had failed to meet his expectations. It was strange she had not known it before, and yet she had done her best.
She had time now to notice the change that had come over her father. Every morning he went off, his axe over his shoulder; such fore-handedness in getting the winter’s wood was unusual in him. When Martin was home it was he who saw that they did not lack for fuel when the cold weather came on.
At the end of the second week she received a letter from her brother. It was the first he had ever written her, for they had never been separated before. Talitha puzzled over its pages, growing more and more bewildered at their contents: “Si Quinn wrote me about the schoolhouse. Isn’t it great! Jake always was heady, he could work up that temper of his until he was worse than a hornet. I hope this’ll be a lesson he’ll remember. I’m just as proud of you as I can be. Everything has worked out for the best after all, hasn’t it? Gincy is studying like a whale. She was mightily disturbed when she heard you’d gone home on her account and I had all I could do to keep her from tagging along after you. But Gincy has a heap of good sense. She’s Miss Howard’s right hand man; I don’t get a sight of her except at meal times, but I can hear her voice on the high notes ’way above the rest come Harmonia nights.—Oh, Gincy’s making good, all right, and I’m glad as can be, but I do miss you awfully, sis—”
Talitha finished and then her eyes wandered back toward the beginning. “I don’t understand it one bit,” she thought. “Mart doesn’t seem to care at all that the schoolhouse burned. He writes as though it were almost a joke.” The tears rushed to Talitha’s eyes. “I’m going right over to the schoolmaster’s, maybe he can explain it,” she decided at last. “I do wonder what he wrote Martin.”
The girl snatched up her sunbonnet and hurried out of the door, the letter in her hand. Half-way to the old man’s cabin she met him hobbling cheerfully along by the aid of his crutch. The satisfied smile on his face brought Talitha’s grievance freshly to mind; she almost resented his unusually jovial greeting.