Clem rose presently to build a new fire, and, being extravagantly inclined because of his plentitude of tobacco, ejected his "chew" into the ashes, and, after putting on the wood, returned to his seat and put out his hand for his tobacco.
Myron entered at that moment from the bedroom. The fire crackled as it caught the new fuel; old Ann sat like a nodding mandarin, oblivious (outwardly) of everything. Clem's astonishment at its disappearance was great. Nevertheless he did not grow wrathful until he had turned out his many pockets and bestrewn the table with their varied contents. He banged each article viciously upon the table, but Ann still slept. She was somewhat overdoing her rôle, and Clem's smouldering wrath flamed up into active indignation as she sat there calm amidst the storm.
"Get up!" he said. "Get up, you stovepipe, and let me see if it ain't under your chair? You know something about it, I'll swear you do! If 'twas a glass of gin, I'll warrant you'd scent it out! Get up, will you?" Saying this, he jerked her chair aside by the back, so that Ann, who was feigning all the languor of one suddenly aroused from deep sleep, slid off the chair to the floor. She improved the occasion, however, by knocking the chair over on Clem's corns as she rose. Clem gave a frightful oath, and Ann stood erect, with a jeering laugh. Myron, anxious to preserve peace, joined Clem in his hunt, whilst Ann stood by.
"Call me stovepipe, will you?" she asked. "Stovepipe indeed, and me the best figger of a woman in the village in my time! Stovepipe! With my waist, too! Stovepipe indeed!" An indignant snort rounded off her sentence.
The little kitchen was so bare that any search was either easy or hopeless. Myron and Clem searched and searched, going over and over the same ground, as the wisest of us do when we look for something lost—for pleasure in old pain, for joy in bygone voices, for hope in withered joys.
Ann waxed more and more derisive.
"If 'twas a spoonful of whiskey, now," she began, plagiarizing and paraphrasing his own words to her; "if 'twas a spoonful of whiskey now, I'll go bail you'd nose it out. You'd ha' run ag'in it long ago. You're better at getting whiskey than at getting clean jugs to put it in, though."
Clem turned to glare at her, and stubbed his toes against the tub. He cast his eyes down, with a curse, but his gaze was held by something which, even as he looked, sank to the bottom, thoroughly saturated.
In a moment he had it out—his tobacco, bloated out of all semblance to its dark-brown self. One glance was enough. With accurate aim, he flung it with all his might at Ann's triumphant countenance.
It struck her across the lips, parted for another gibe. She subsided, sputtering, and Clem, gathering up his belongings from the table with one sweep into his handkerchief, flung himself out of the room.