“You’re a goose yourself!”
The woman was nervous when she came back to the kitchen.
“Dear me!” she cried. “I’m beginning to worry about Pa. For it’s almost ten o’clock. Do you suppose he’s lost?”
“Doesn’t he know the roads around here?” I inquired.
“Him? Pa is dumb, if I must admit it, as one who has lived with him for more than forty years. He isn’t a Danver,” came proudly, “it’s me who is. He’s a Doane, and the Doanes, from Cyril Doane down, are a thick-headed lot, though I hoped well for Pa when I married him. But it’s a fact, he wouldn’t know how to put on his shirt if I didn’t yank him into it. However, he’s a good husband in some ways. For one thing, he never talks back to me. But it’s me who has to do all the planning. His head might just as well be made of wood for all the use he makes of it. I never can depend on him. The other day I sent him to Neponset Corners for some baking powder and he ended up in Sandy Ridge where he bought bug powder. Powder! That was all he could keep in his mind at one time—he knew I had said powder—but could he think of baking powder?—no, bug powder! That’s Pa for you. No wonder I worry about him when he’s out of my sight. And I wish now that I hadn’t trusted him to go to Pardyville alone.”
“We came through Pardyville this afternoon,” says Poppy, by way of conversation.
“Like as not,” came the further worry, “he’ll go to the wrong depot. Oh, dear! What wouldn’t I give to hear one of his old tires blow up out in front—just to know that he was home safe and sound. Suppose something should happen to Miss Ruth!—and her coming here secretly. What would her ma say? I sometimes think she shouldn’t have planned to come here without telling her ma. And to that point, why she wants to come here, so secret-like, is a mystery to me. But when I got her letter, asking me to come over with Pa to open the house, I didn’t say ‘no.’ That was little enough for a body to do for one’s rich relation, I thought—and you always get something for it. As I said to Pa last night, ‘Pa, why is Miss Ruth so anxious to come here all of a sudden? What is her object? Kept away from her grandpa’s funeral by her ma, who never got over the quarrel, is she anxious now to come here, on her way to boarding school, out of respect for the dead?’ But you might as well talk to a hitching post as to talk to Pa. All he ever says is ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and half the time he doesn’t know enough to say that if I don’t tell him to.”
I was thinking to myself, sort of grinning-like, that maybe all “Pa” ever had a chance to say was “yes” and “no.” But, of course, I kept shut on my thoughts. For I know my manners.
As we finished our supper, the droning voice of a clock came down the stairs. I began to count the slow strokes.
“Listen!” the woman breathed, and I saw that a quick change had come over her. She looked frightened—as though she expected something to rush in and grab her. “... seven ... eight ... nine ... ten,” she counted. There was a short deep silence. Then something slammed upstairs. “What is it?” she cried, looking back and forth at us.