“I had rather you cried,” answered Margaret Cleave.
“Well, I’m not going to cry.... Look at that calf in the meadow yonder—little brown thing with a mark on the forehead! Doesn’t it look lonely—usually there are two of them playing together. Here comes an old man with a bucket.”
It was an old negro with a great wooden bucket filled with quinces. He put up a beseeching hand and Tullius stopped the horses. “Dey’s moughty fine quinces, mistis. Don’ yo’ want ter buy ’em? Dey dries fust-rate.”
“They’re dry already,” said Miriam. “They’re withered and small.”
“Yass ’m. Dar ain’ anything dishyer war ain’t shrivelled. But I sho does need ter sell ’em, mistis.”
“I can’t pay much for them,” said Margaret. “Money’s very scarce, uncle. It’s withered, too.”
“Yass ’m, dats so! I ain’t er-gwiner ax much, mistis. I jes’ erbleeged ter sell ’em, kase de cabin’s bare. Ef ten dollars ’ll suit you—”
Mrs. Cleave drew from her purse two Confederate notes. The seller of quinces emptied his freight into the bottom of the roomy equipage. He went on down the road, slow swinging his empty bucket, and the Three Oaks’ carriage mounted the last long hill. It was going to the county-seat to do some shopping. The sunshine lay in dead gold, upon the road and the fields on either hand. There was hardly wind enough to lift the down from the open milkweed pods. The mountains were wrapped in haze.
“War-shrunk quinces!” said Miriam. “Do you remember the Thunder Run woman with blackberries to sell a month ago? She said the same thing. I said the berries were small and she said, ‘Yass, ma’am. The war’s done stunt them.’”
“I wonder where the army is to-day!”