“Joulterhead!” said Martha, with a loving smile. “And you’ve had fourteen!”
The letter fell from his nerveless fingers. “Cousin Caroline confined again!” And the clacking of all those innumerable infants filled the air—like the barking of the black geese on the wintry mud-flats. But he recovered himself. “Why, she’s a widow, not a pair.”
“Widows can be re-paired,” said Martha.
“Must have been a middlin’ bold man to goo courtin’ a family that size,” Caleb reflected.
He picked up the letter and poised it in his hand.
“Don’t feel as weighty as St. Paul’s letters,” he said.
“The text doesn’t mean his letters were heavy,” explained Martha. “ ‘His letters, say they, are weighty and powerful’—that’s what I was reading you when the clock stopped. Any fool can write a heavy letter—he’s only got to write on a slate.”
“That’s a true word,” said Caleb, admiring her.
“Whereas,” pursued Martha, “the whole Bible has been got inside a nutshell.”
“Lord!” said Caleb. “I suppose it was a cokernut!”