“Why, Gordon,” Buckley Simmons protested, “we were all stirring him up a little; you didn’t say anything—”
Makimmon picked the dog up, holding him against his side, the awkward legs streaming down in an uncomfortable confusion of joints and paws. “I paid two hundred dollars for this dog,” he pronounced, “as a piece of dam’ foolishness, a sort of drunken joke on Greenstream. But it’s no joke; the two hundred was cheap. I’ve seen a lot of good men—I’m not exactly a peafowl myself—but this young dog’s better’n any man I ever stood up to; he’s got more guts.”
He abruptly turned his back upon the gathering, and descended to the road, carrying the limp, warm body all the way home.
II
It was his own home to which he returned, the original dwelling of the Makimmons in Greenstream. He could not, he had told Lettice, be comfortable anywhere else; he could not be content with it closed against the living sound of the stream, or in strange hands. Some changes had been made since his marriage—another space had been enclosed beyond the kitchen, a chamber occupied by Sim Caley and his wife, moved from the outlying farm where Lettice had spent her weeks of “retreat” throughout the passing summers. The exterior had been painted leaden-grey, and a shed transformed into a small, serviceable stable. But the immediate surroundings were the same: the primitive sweep still rose from the well, a cow still grazed in the dank grass; the stream slipped by, mirroring its stable banks, the foliage inexhaustibly replenished by nature; beyond the narrow valley the mountain range shut out the rising sun, closed Greenstream into its deep, verdurous gorge.
High above, the veil of light was still rosy, but it was dusk about Gordon Makimmon’s dwelling. Lettice, in white, with a dark shawl drawn about her shoulders, was standing on the porch. She spoke in a strain of querulous sweetness:
“Gordon, you’ve been the longest while. Mrs. Caley says your supper’s all spoiled. You know she likes to get the table cleared right early in the evening.”
“Is Mrs. Caley to have her say in this house or am I? That’s what I want to know. Am I to eat so’s she can clear the table, or is she to clear the table when I have had my supper?”