“You’re suspicious, too, David Dale. You don’t think the big man is a gentleman.”
I considered.
“I think he would be called a gentleman, Wanza.”
She tossed her head.
“I do think he’s the handsomest man—and the smartest man, seems! And I like embroidered underclothes. So there!”
CHAPTER XV
I BEGIN TO WONDER ABOUT WANZA
SOMETIMES I grew perverse, and went about the tedious common round of my tread-mill existence doggedly, taking umbrage at Mrs. Olds for the many unnecessary, trivial services she exacted. She seemed to delight in keeping my neck under the yoke. There was always a door sagging on its hinges, a knife that needed a new handle, a lamp or two that she or Wanza had forgotten to fill. The mice that I took from the traps each morning were legion. They were Mrs. Olds’ favorite topic of conversation at breakfast time. How one small cabin could harbor so fierce and vast a horde I could scarce conceive. I believe I half suspected Mrs. Olds of emulating the pied piper, and rounding them up from the fields and woods. I was appointed custodian of the wood-rats’ traps, as well. These were taken alive; and one morning I slyly let one escape beneath my tormentor’s chair. Jingles saved the situation by pouncing on the rodent and snapping his teeth together on its neck. I came to have small appetite for breakfast.
I began each day by carrying water from the spring to fill the barrel outside the kitchen door. Mrs. Olds was apt to mount guard over the barrel during this period, to see that no earwigs or bits of leaves went into it from the pail. She was very particular to have the barrel kept sweet and clean, and every second day I scrubbed and rinsed the inside. She required very fine wood for the kitchen stove for quick fires when she desired to heat her patient’s food; and for the fireplace in the front room she asked me to select other wood than cedar, cedar being prone to crackle and snap. I was well nigh staggered with the knowledge of how a woman’s housekeeping differs from a man’s. Joey and I had felt no lack in the good old days. I smiled to see my lad’s eyes open widely at Mrs. Olds’ occasional reference to our “pitiful attempts at housekeeping.”
“Are our housekeeping pitiful?” he invariably asked me later.
But though I swallowed my rising gorge, and managed to work under Mrs. Olds’ coercion, there was ample time left in which to labor at the simple tasks I loved.