“That is all right, mother, as far as it goes, but we’ve just got to buy that fruit farm somehow.” And he fell asleep that night, happy in making impossible plans for the purchase.
It was perhaps as well for Lammy’s self-conceit that he did not hear his mother talk with Mrs. Slocum, who came in about nine o’clock, tearful, yet at the same time in a threatening rage, demanding that he be “whipped thoro’ for half murdering her harmless boy when he was taking an innercent walk, and that if he didn’t get the whippin’, she’d get a warrant immedjet.”
Mrs. Lane waited until she had finished her tirade, and then calling Joshua, who had retreated to the wood-shed, said: “Mis’ Slocum here needs a warrant writ hasty; jest you escort her down to the Squire’s, as her husband don’t seem intrested to go with her. I hate to see a neighbour obleeged to play the man and risk goin’ out in the dark alone.”
Then as her adversary, seeing herself outflanked, rose to go, she added with apparent sympathy: “Of course I know it’s hard for you to feel ’Ram’s beat by one half his size, even if the gate post did help Lammy, and folks ’ll be surprised to hear it, but you mustn’t blame him too much; it was maybe me, his mother, in him worked Lammy’s fists so good.” And Lauretta Ann looked her visitor straight in the eyes. Some weeks later Mrs. Slocum had reason to remember that look.
[X]
LAMMY CONSULTS OLD LUCKY
When November came, Joshua Lane had completed his work of preparing the fruit farm for the auction, according to Aunt Jimmy’s wish that it should be in full running order when sold.
The old fowls were mostly sold off, and the henhouse was full of the vigorous laying pullets that mean so much in early winter. The fall cow had calved, and the two or three yearlings were as sleek as does.
When the time came for the division of the furniture between the wives of the three Lane brothers by drawing lots, public interest again awakened, and Mrs. Slocum expressed great anxiety lest it should not be done fairly, saying to her husband: “It’s a fussy, mixed-up business anyway. Why didn’t they auction off the stuff and let folks in to see it done fair? They do say, for all Miss Jemima lived so plain, she had stores of good stuff shut up in those top rooms that even Dinah Lucky never’s had a peek at when she went to houseclean. Those old mahogany pieces are worth money at Northboro, and Lauretta Ann’s cute enough to know it, but I don’t believe those other slab-sided Lane women do; so do you watch your chance and make them an offer so soon as it’s divided. There’s a wardrobe there, solid mahogany, twice as big as one they ask fifty dollars for in the ’curious’ shop. Most likely they’d value cheap, new stuff better.”