“But have you thought how difficult it will be to tell her?” inquired the Schoolteacher.
“What's the trouble about tellin' her?”
“Well,” replied the School-teacher, his eyes resting on the old man's swollen scrofuletic leg, “the trouble is that the one who goes to tell her ought to be better than she is. He ought, himself, to have lived a clean life.... Perhaps you have, perhaps you can tell her.”
The old man thought that the Schoolteacher saw something lying on the ground, for he stooped over and his finger moved in the dust of the path. And while he remained thus, the old man hurried along to the road. The mare stood facing in the direction of the way over the mountain by Nicholas Parks' house.
The old man took her by the bridle and turned her around in the road.
Then he climbed slowly into the creaking cart. He looked back when he had got his big bulk on the folded bedquilt. The School-teacher was standing upright where he had passed him in the path. The old man put his hand on the corner of the seat and turned heavily about.
“There's another thing,” he said. “I'd like to know why you're always carryin' that bastard brat around with you.”
Then he drove away, but not on the road that crossed the mountain by Nicholas Park's house.