"I am awfully glad that your brother was not hurt so badly as at first reported. He couldn't be, and be able to come home now. These papers do magnify everything so, and make no end of fuss over little things as well as big ones, I was very much alarmed at first, for fear Si might be really badly hurt."
This was too much for Maria. Her company manners slid off like a drop of water from a cabbage leaf, and she answered hotly:
"I'd have you know. Miss Widgeon, the papers don't magnify the matter. They don't make a fuss over nothing. They don't begin to tell all the truth. None o' them can. My brother was nearer dead than any man who ever lived. Nothing but the favor of God and Klegg grit pulled him through. It'd killed a whole house full o' Randy Widgeons or that Second Lieutenant. I remember Randy Widgeon turning pale and a'most fainting when he run a fish-hook in his finger. If it ain't nothing, why don't Randy Widgeon go down there a little while, with the rest o' the boys, and do his share?"
"My brother disbelieves in the constitutionality of this war, and denies that we have any right to take away other people's slaves," said Arabella loftily. "I s'pose he's a right to his opinions."
"A poor excuse's better'n none," retorted Maria. "I noticed that he didn't turn out last Summer to keep John Morgan from stealing our people's horses, and robbing their stores and houses. S'pose he thought it unconstitutional to let a nasty rebel gorilla shoot at him. It's very convenient to have opinions to keep you from doin' things that you're afraid to do."
The dialog was approaching the volcanic stage, when a poorly-dressed, sad-faced woman, with a babe in her arms, edged through the crowd to Maria, and said timidly, for she had never been accounted by the Kleggs as in their set:
"Miss Maria, I don't s'pose you know me, but I do so want to git a chance to speak to your pap as soon as he gets here, and before all these people gits hold of him. Mebbe he's found out something about poor Jim. I can't believe that Jim was killed, and I keep hopin' that he got away somehow, and is in one o' them hospitals. Mebbe your pap knows. I know you think Jim was bad and rough, but he was mighty good to me, and he's all that I had. I'm nearly dead to hear about him, but I can't write, nor kin Jim. I've bin tryin' to make up my mind to come over to your house, and ax you to write for me."
"Of course, you can, you poor, dear woman," said Maria, her mood changing at once from fierceness to loving pity. "You shall be the first one to speak to Pap and Si after me. Why didn't you come over to see us long ago. We'd only bin too glad to see you, and do all we could for you. Yes, I know you.
"You're Polly Blagdon, and live down by the sawmill, where your husband used to work. You look tired and weak carrying that big baby. Let me hold him awhile and rest you. Sit down there on that box. I'll make Sol Pringle clear it off for you."