“We are so glad to see you,” she said. “Father is in the far-away meadow at the hay; Mabella will be here in a moment.”
“Is your hand better?” he asked.
“Yes, oh quite!” she replied, pleased that he had remembered.
Temperance and the driver carried the trunk upstairs; the driver departed and Temperance came to greet Sidney. It was afternoon, and Temperance was busy at her patchwork. She sewed dexterously while she talked.
“Terrible weather, ain’t it?” she began. “My soul! Seems to me the Lord’s clean forgot us here. The paint on the shed’s fair blistered, and the cat’s thin with the heat. The grain’s done for, and the hay’s no better’n rakings, and as for the roots—well, there’ll be none if it don’t rain, and do it quick, too. ‘Drink, and praise God,’ the preacher’s got painted on his well by the way, and the well’s been dry these five weeks. Look at that sky! It’s dry as bass-wood. My chickings is going about with their mouths open, and there’s nothing in the ponds but weeds and frogs. They say frogs grow in water, but I never seen the beat of the frogs this year. They say the Frenchers eats ’em. It’s a pity our men couldn’t learn, and we’d pay a sight less for butchers’ meat. My soul!”—Temperance’s lecture upon the drought was brought to an abrupt conclusion. Mabella, not seeing Sidney standing in the shadow, had come stealing up behind Miss Tribbey, and suddenly seizing her round the waist swung her round in a breathless whirl.
“My soul!” said Miss Tribbey again, releasing herself violently, and feeling her head and patting her person mechanically, as if to be certain she was intact. “You ain’t bridle-wise yet, M’bella. It’s cur’us you don’t seem to get sense.”
Mabella laughed.
Miss Tribbey continued with an ill-sustained show of bad temper, “You kin laugh, but it’s discouragin’.”
“It is,” agreed Mabella blithely. “I’m like Nathan Peck.”
“Go ’long with you!” said Temperance, tossing her head. “Nathan ain’t none too brainy, but I never seen any such carryin’s on as them with him!”