“When will she be back?” interrupted Mr. Long.
Captain Corbet shook his head solemnly.
“It would take a man with a head as long as a horse to tell that,” said he, sententiously.
“Where is she then? I’ll drive off and get her.”
“She! law bless you, I don’t know no more’n a onhatched chick.”
“Don’t know! You surely know which way she went.”
“Wal, she kind o’ tho’t she’d go to the village, and then she kind o’ hinted she’d visit her married sister that lives on Billy Jackson’s farm. They’re down with the measles, and—”
“Bother the measles! Do you mean to say that you let her go off, and quietly sat down here to nurse your baby, when you ought to have been at work?”
“I didn’t let her go. She walked off herself. ‘Benjamin,’ says she, ‘take care of the babby.’ He’s dreadful fond of me. Won’t be fed by nobody else. I ginrally feed him at nights when he wakes. An’ a dreadful high-sperited creetur is that child’s mother. An’ they shan’t abuse him. No-o-o-o,” he added, abruptly, turning his conversation toward the “babby” himself, who began to make faces and utter sounds premonitory of a howl.
Mr. Long turned abruptly away.