CHAPTER XIII
That afternoon we were all quilting at our house and Miss Sarah was pleased enough to give an account of her guest.
“I’ve had a long letter from Lucia Byington,” she said to my grandmother, “explaining that precious scapegrace of a son of hers, but I can tell Lucia she might have spared herself the pains. The minute I clapped my eyes on him I knew all about him, having known his father and mother. He has all her charm and her willfulness, with the iron will and talent of his father. I suppose, because I’m an old maid, I can’t understand why a man can’t bring up a high-metaled son, exactly like himself, without being at odds with him. But there! He expects his son to start where he’s left off, with all the sobriety and solemnity of an aged Solomon. And why people like Lucia and David should expect not to have trouble with their children, I don’t know. And as for David, he fights his own youth in the boy. Now the time had come for Master Roger to stop skylarking over the earth; he was holding out; leave town he wouldn’t. They had words; he slung a knapsack on his back and went off, and wasn’t heard from for a week, and then came back as meek as the Prodigal.”
You may be sure that Ellen and I had our ears wide open to this story, knowing as we did why it was that Roger had suddenly become the docile son. We were so self-conscious that our eyes did not dare seek one another’s, and we sewed together the large, gay squares of patchwork with the precision of little automatons.
My grandmother spoke up:—
“Well, Sarah, I half dislike having your stormy petrel in our little town. I saw him this morning, and he seemed to me a restless-looking bird. He’ll be turning the silly heads of our girls next.”
“Let me catch him at it, or them, for that matter!” cried Miss Sarah. “He’s here for work, and not to worry me with such-like goings-on! You may be sure that his family have had trouble enough with him in such imbroglios already.”
We had tea early and did the dishes and fell to our quilting again. I noticed Ellen becoming more and more abstracted until finally Miss Sarah said:—
“Well, Ellen, try to bring your mind back to your work. Years haven’t taken your habit of ‘wool-gathering’ from you.”
Ellen wrote about this:—