“Not here,” said John. “He ’ll be at the little house—down by the creek, you know.” The switchman was silent for a little. “A man can do what he likes wi’ his own,” he said at last gruffly. “He owns the farm—I ’ll go—”
“I hope you won’t go,” John said quickly. “We need some one to cook for us—good nourishing food—and I was going to ask your wife—?”
The old man’s eyes still pierced him. “Ye think Sim Tetlow ’ll get well on food ’t my Ellen ’d cook?—Choke him!” he said.
John waited a minute. “I was n’t going to tell him who cooked it—I thought he did n’t need to know.” He turned and looked at the man beside him. “He needs all the help we can give him, Hugh. He’s desperate.”
A slow, deep smile had come into the Scotch eyes—They glimmered to little points and sought the distant horizon. “He must e’en take his fate,” said the old man grimly, “wi’ the rest o’ us.”
“But we can help him,” said John. “I feel it. You can help—”
“I ’ll do naught for him,” said the man sternly. “She’s within door, and ye can ask her. If she ’ll cook for Sim Tetlow, I ’ll bide by what she says. I ’ll not lift a hand to hinder—or help.” He moved toward the bam, walking with huge strides, like some grim, implacable fate.
John watched him for a moment. Then he turned and knocked on the farmhouse door.
When he lifted the latch, the little old woman by the stove looked up, bending gentle eyes upon him. She set down the frying-pan and came forward, The smile in her face like the October sunshine outside. “It’s Johnny Bennett,” she said, “and I was telling Hugh, but the morning, I’d be glad to see him.”
The young man took the outstretched hand with a sudden lifting of heart. He forgot the gaunt figure striding from him and saw only the gentle, wrinkled face in its prim Scotch cap, beaming with light.