“Come here, sonny.”
It was a rare term of endearment, and Steve got up quickly and went to her side.
“Don’t think too much o’ whut ye pappy said about city folks. He’s allus hated ’em fer some reason, I don’t know whut, ’less hit was ’cause I saw one when I was a gal afore we married, nuver min’ how ner where, and arter that I allus wanted to see whut was over the mountings. Ef ever ye git a chanct I want ye ter go thar an’ larn ter do things. I’d er done hit ef I’d er been a man. But don’t say nothin’ to ye pappy.”
This caution was unnecessary; and what a change the simple words made for Steve! His spirit bounded up into the world of visions again, and when dinner was on the table he refused to take a mouthful of the savoury rabbit, so ashamed was he of the manner of its killing.
After this his mind was constantly on the watch which was to come. How it was to reach him he did not think out, for the simple reason that he knew nothing of the distance which stretched between him and the city, nor of methods of communication. No letter or piece of mail of any sort had ever come to 23 his home, or that of any one else of which he knew but things of various sorts were gotten from the crossroads store ten miles away, skillets and pans, axes and hoes, which were made somewhere, and he supposed some time when some one of the community went to the store they’d find his watch there. But week after week went by till spring came on, and nobody went to the store. The mountain folk indeed had little need of stores. They spun and wove the cloth for their clothes, raised their corn, pigs, and tobacco, made their own “sweetin’,” long and short, meaning sugar and molasses, and distilled their own whiskey. So the boy’s heart grew heavy again with the long delay and he began to think bitterly that his father and not his mother was right, when one day a stranger whom he had never seen before drove up to the door.
II
A PACKAGE BY MAIL
“Howdye! Does airy feller named Stephen Langly live here?” said the stranger, reining in his tired, raw-boned steed without difficulty.