“And as long as I am mistress at The Clays there can be no other voice in authority. While I choose, I rule!”
“Your soger son there says different,” proclaimed the piggy one. “A’s to be master heer, what time you buys ’n out o’ th’ Army, and then there’s noan on earth her’ll hang her pretty yead for....” He jerked a grimy stump of a thumb contemptuously towards Nelly. “Least of all mother-i’-laa, Widder Horrotian!”
“Mother!” broke out the soldier, controlling by a violent effort the urgent impulse to punch the speaker’s matted head, “will you let this mangy dog make bad blood between us? Something of what he was repeating I did say to my wife. But I’ll take my solemn oath, without a word disrespectful to you! You promised to buy me out of the Army, and let me manage the farm for you, and in the course of Nature—and may it be long a-coming!—a day ’ull dawn when I am master of The Clays. Then, as I hope my mother never has had or will have reason to be ashamed of me, so never may my wife. The words were harmless, twist ’em as the eavesdropper will. Upon my soul they were!”
Sarah swallowed something that might have been an iron choke-pear of the Middle Ages. She looked in her son’s hot blue eyes, and said with stern composure:
“Pledge not your soul to its undoing, though I dread it be lost a’ready. My father left this farm to me, to use at my discretion. ’Tis for me to decide when my son be fit to rule. Jason Digweed here were one of th’ witnesses to your grandfather’s Will. He made it his own self, without borrowing words from any man, an’ ’twas read out here, in th’ best parlor, by Lawyer Haycock, after the Funeral. Digweed remembers the wording, I’ll warrant. Speak out, Digweed. Prove to this undutiful and rebellious son that his mother does not lie!”
Thus adjured, Jason cleared his throat with a sound like the scraping of roads, and recited with relish:
“‘And I Leaves this ’eer Varm wi’ all of the ’Foresaid Messuages and Lands hadjoining and Distant To Sarah Ann Horrotian my Deer-Beloved Daughter Trusting to her Usings and Employings and Disposings of the Same For the Bennyfit of Her Lawful Son Joshua Who shall succeed to the Use and Enjoyment of the Property when in the Judgment of my aforesaid Daughter Sarah Ann Horrotian He shall Hev’ Attaindered to Years of Discretion.’”
“You hear?” said Sarah.
“Ay, I hear,” her son returned with bitterness. His chest heaved; his bright blue eyes burned reproachfully upon the haggard indomitable little woman in meager wincey brown.
“And I see, too,” he added, with a bleak smile that showed the sour woman’s portion in him, “as my mother is like to go back on her promise of buying me out of the Army, and setting me to manage the farm.”