The tight-chinked cabin had the strangest interior on the Rocky Fork. There was only one room, and the hollow of the roof rose up in a cavernous arch without joists. Two wooden bars were, indeed, set high across one corner, but they served as roosts for chickens who had already taken to them for the night, and who stirred quavering as Wilda shut the door and emptied a gourd.
Before the fire, yet not too near it, was a trundle-bed which could be pushed anywhere on wheels.
She dropped her hood and shawl upon a chair and slipped toward the trundle-bed, motioning back a great mastiff who kept guard at the hearth. He sat down again and licked his lips; the glory of burning logs in the fireplace was enough to content any dog, for that cabin seemed to have the sunset imprisoned within it. Calico curtains on the four-paned windows hid darkening woods outside.
“O Sweetness!” whispered Wilda, bending over the trundle-bed and scarcely daring to touch the patchwork quilt. Her eyes were full of kisses and fondling for her only baby, the helpless being who reversed for her the maternal relations. It was a little old woman, whose apple face had shriveled into puckers only around the corners of the eyes and mouth. A dimity nightcap tied it in, almost covering white silk threads of hair. This helpless mother, lying in the dead alive state we now call paralysis, and the Rocky Forkers then called palsy, was the secret delight of Wilda’s heart, and Alanson Bundle’s only rival. But she concealed her fondness like a crime. The name of Sweetness was sacred to that hollow cabin. Bounce could make no remark about it, and he was the only safe auditor in an age when excess of loving was considered weakness.
Wilda hung her supper kettles on the hooks of the crane, and made biscuits, and raked out coals to bake them in a Dutch oven. Alanson Bundle would not appear until the evening meal was over. He pottered around in his woods or went across the ridge to look after cattle.
The log-house was exquisite with cleanness, even in that corner where the fowls roosted. No cobwebs or dust marred the rich brown of its upper depth. The floor and stone hearth were scoured white. Wilda’s spinning-wheel stood beside one wall. Her own apartment was an oblong space curtained with homespun which had been dyed a dull red. Some red and gilt chairs, a pine table and a red and gilt cushioned settee on rockers, furnished the house. The log wall between hearth and door held gay trappings of tinware and pewter, all shining in the mighty blaze.
The table was spread and a perfume of coffee filled the place. Wilda had turned the fried eggs and lifted them carefully to a platter before she heard the usual sounds her mother made to call her.
Sweetness was wide awake and smiling like a baby. The Rocky Fork people said she had her faculties but couldn’t make no use of them. Unabated intelligence looked through her eyes and her face never distorted itself, although she could not talk.
“Have you been lonesome to-day, Sweetness? No? Have you slept much? Yes? That’s good. Did Speckle and Banty sit on Bounce’s back and keep you company? They’ve gone to roost now. They’re going to wake up about midnight and crow for Christmas, and wake you up—the bad chickens.—Now supper’s ready. Folks round here thinks I starve you because you never eat in the middle of the day. ’Tain’t no use for me to say anything. But if you don’t want me to be clean disgraced, you must eat hearty when you do eat.”
She fed the helpless being with long and patient use of a spoon. The fire roared. Bounce rose up and yawned, stretching his limbs, to hint that his own plate had been empty since morning. But Wilda never hurried this important part of her day’s business. The food which she must eat became overdone. She sat on the trundle-bed, giving her mother with the spoon meat all the life and doings of that small world on the Rocky Fork.