But says I, “He knows enough when he hain’t skairt to death.” And he does. He is industrious, and so is she, and I shouldn’t wonder if they got along first-rate, and done well.
Wall, when we got there, Nathan was settin’ by the stove in the settin’-room. He was afraid of Alzina Ann, and was too bashful to set down, or stand up, or speak, or anything. And when she asked him “how his health was,” he didn’t say nothin’, but looked down on the floor, and under his chair, and into his hat, as if he was tryin’ to find his health, and drive it out, and make it tell how it was.
But she asked him over agin—she was perfectly heartless, or else she didn’t notice his sufferin’s. And the second time she asked him, he sort o’ looked under his chair agin, and into his coat pocket, and seemed to give up findin’ his health and makin’ it speak for him, so he said, sort o’ dry and husky, sunthin’ about bein’ “comfortable.”
Which was one of the biggest stories Nathan Spooner had told sence he j’ined the meetin’-house, for he wuzn’t comfortable; far from it. His face was red as blood, and he was more than half blind, I could see that by the looks of his mean. But after awhile he seemed to revive up a little. He wuzn’t afraid of me and Josiah, not very. And after Alzina Ann and Cassandra got engaged in talkin, he said quite a number of words to us, as rational and straight as anybody. But Alzina Ann had to bring back his sufferin’s agin, and worse than he had suffered.
I hadn’t said a word to Alzina Ann about Cassandra’s misfortune; I hadn’t mentioned the child to her. He is a dretful humbly child, about the humbliest boy I ever see in my life. He looks fairly pitiful he is so humbly, and he hain’t more than half-witted, I think. But Alzina Ann couldn’t keep still; she had to flatter somebody, or sunthin’, so she had to begin agin:
“How much! how much! that beautiful little boy looks like his pa! Don’t you think so?” says she to Cassandra.
And then she would look at Nathan, and then at the boy, in that rapt, enthusiastic way of her’n. And says she to Cassandra:
“Hain’t it a comfort to you to think he looks so much like his pa?”
CASSANDRA’S MISFORTUNE.