"Well, I'm sure I don't want to tag her, Ethel; I just don't want her to overdo."
Mrs. Weaver spoke in a tone of mingled injury and self-justification.
"Oh, well, mother, she isn't likely to put her shoulder out of joint pulling a few heads of lettuce."
The girl broke out again into cheerful interrogations concerning the disaster at sea:—
"Did she neverr returren?
No, she neverr returrened."
Mrs. Weaver gave a little sigh, as if she feared her daughter's words might prove prophetic, and buried her plump fists in the puffy dough.
Old Mrs. Moxom turned when she reached the garden gate and glanced back at the house. Then she clasped the pan to her breast and skurried along the fence toward the orchard. Once under the trees, she did not look behind her, but went rapidly toward the field where she knew her son was plowing. The reflection of the sun on the tin pan made him look up, and when he saw her he stopped his team. She came across the soft brown furrows to his side.
"I'd have come to the fence when I saw you, if I hadn't had the colt," he said kindly. "What's wanted?"
The old woman's face twitched. She pushed her sunbonnet back with one trembling hand.
"Jason," she said, with a little jerk in her voice, "your paw's alive."