Bascom Barnard paused on the kitchen steps, and looked in at the door with suspicion and irritation in his eyes.
“Bakin’ chickens, air ye?” he asked. “Now I’d like to know what ye’re wastin’ chickens fur at this rate? An’ pies an’ lightbread an’ puddin’, well the land, Ma’ Jane, did ye think we was millionaires?”
“I didn’t know but ye’d change your mind about goin’ over to the camp-meetin’ an’ it would help along to have most of the cookin’ for Sunday done at home,” she said humbly.
“It does seem to me, Ma’ Jane, that it takes more talkin’ to convince you of anything, than any other seventeen women I ever have saw. I’ve tol’ you every day for the last week that we warn’t goin’ to that dratted camp-meetin’—that we couldn’t both leave, and I was bound to go over to the corners and see Bink Denny about that land—that a woman’s business was at home, stid of gallivantin’ ’round the country ’tendin’ camp-meetin’s; cain’t you ever learn anything, Ma’ Jane?”
Ma’ Jane shut the oven door and stood up; she wiped the perspiration from her face with a checked apron.
“I’ve been hopin’ for years that they’d have a camp-meetin’ near enough for me to go. I’ve not ’tended since I was a girl. Mother always had a tent an’ you was glad enough to come to camp-meetin’ then, Bascom, an’ this one’s not more’n six miles away—an’ I want to go.”
“Well, you know good an’ well you cain’t. Somebody’s got to stay on this place to take keer o’ things—an’ since it cain’t be me, it’s got to be you.”
“Mary Hopkins tol’ me she’d save one end of her tent for me; it’s built o’ boards—two rooms and a hall between—an’ there’s a big shed at the back for a dining-room, an’ I wanted to go worse’n I ever wanted to go anywheres, I guess.”
“Fur’s that’s concerned, I reckon I wanted to go, but you don’t see me throwin’ our livin’ away so’s I could gallop off to every camp-meetin’ that comes along, do ye?
“I won’t be back for three days,” he stated, as he went away. In deep silence Ma’ Jane sat down and looked at the kitchen table. It was heaped with the good things she had prepared for the great Sunday dinner at the camp-ground, where it was the joy of every tenter to keep open house and entertain all who would come.