VII
A smooth, conical hill rose sharply to the left, momentarily shutting out the valley; and beyond, at the foot of a steep declivity, stood the Makimmon dwelling. Originally a four-square, log house, the logs had been covered by boards, and to its present, irregular length, one room in width, had been added an uneven roofed porch broadside on a narrow lip of sod by a wide, shallow stream. An indifferent stand of corn held precariously to the sharp slope from the public road; an unkempt cow grazed the dank sod by a primitive well sweep; a heap of tin cans, bright or rusted, their fading paper labels loose and littering the grass, had been untidily accumulated at a back door.
Gordon passed about the end of his dwelling to the side that faced the water. A wave of hot air, a heavy, greasy odor and the sputtering of boiling fat, swept out from the kitchen. He filled a tin basin on the porch from a convenient bucket of water, and made a hasty toilet.
Clare paused at the door, a long handled spoon in her attenuated grasp; she was an emaciated woman of thirty, with prominent cheek bones, a thin, sensitive nose, and a colorless mouth set in a harsh line by excessive physical suffering. There was about her, in spite of her gaunt features and narrow, stooping frame, something appealingly simple, girlish. A blue ribband made a gay note in her faded, scant hair; she had pinned a piece of draggled color about her throat. “I’ve been looking for you the half hour,” she said querulously; “draw up t’ the table.”
“I stopped at Simmons’, and brought you a pretty, too; it’s in the bundle.”
“Gordon!” she exclaimed, as he unwrapped the shoes, “they are elegant! Had you ought to have got them? We need so much—mosquito bar, the flies are terrible wearing, the roof’s crying for tin, and—”
“You’re as bad as Sampson,” he interrupted her, almost shortly; “we’ve got to have pleasures as well as profits. And too,” he directed, “don’t put those shoes away like you did that watered silk shawl I got you in Stenton. Wear them ... to-night.”
“Oh, no!” she cried, “not just setting around; they’ll get smudged. Not to-night, Gordon; maybe to-morrow, or when I go to church.”
“Tonight,” he repeated inexorably.
A bare, stained table with spreading legs pinned through the oak board was ranged against a bench on the kitchen wall, where, in the watery light of a small, glass lamp, Gordon and Clare Makimmon ate their supper of flat, dark, salt-raised bread, strips of bacon and dripping greens, and swimming, purplish preserves.