"Don't know as I did," answered the man, without enthusiasm.
"Well, you see, after we was married, your grandfather Weaver offered your paw this quarter-section if he'd stay here in Ioway; but he had his heart set on going to Californay, and didn't want it; so after it turned out the way it did, and you was born, your grandfather gave me this farm, and I done very well with it. That's the reason your step-paw insisted on you having it when we was dividing things up before he died."
"Seems to me father worked pretty hard on this place himself."
The man said the word "father" half defiantly.
"Mr. Moxom? Oh, yes, he was a first-rate manager, and the kindest man that ever drew breath. I remember when your sister Angie was born—oh, dear me!"—the old woman felt her voice giving way, and stopped an instant,—"it seems so kind of strange. Well, I guess we'd better just drop it, Jason. I must go back to the house. Emma didn't like my coming for lettuce. She'll think I've planted some, and am waitin' for it to come up."
She gave her son a quivering smile as she turned away. He stood still and watched her until she had crossed the plowed ground. It seemed to him she walked more feebly than when she came out.
"That's awful queer," he said, shaking his head, "calling her own daughters 'the Moxom girls.'"
III
Ethel Weaver had been to Ashland for the mail, and was driving home in the summer dusk. A dash of rain had fallen while she was in the village, and the air was full of the odor of moist earth and the sweetness of growing corn. The colt she was driving held his head high, glancing from side to side with youthful eagerness for a sensation, and shying at nothing now and then in sheer excess of emotion over the demand of his monotonous life.
The girl held a letter in her lap, turning the pages with one unincumbered hand, and lifting her flushed face with a contemptuous "Oh, Barney, you goose!" as the colt drew himself into attitudes of quivering fright, which dissolved suddenly at the sound of her voice and the knowledge that another young creature viewed his coquettish terrors with the disrespect born of comprehension. As they turned into the lane west of the house, Ethel folded her letter and thrust it hastily into her pocket, and the colt darted through the open gate and drew up at the side door with a transparent assumption of serious purpose suggested by the proximity of oats.