“Say, why has Rosie come back, boy, I’d like to know.”
“She said as she couldn’t endure a city no longer. She wanted the plains, the Injuns, Ma, you, an’ the farm.”
“Pshaw—boy! Plains! Farm! Injuns! Ha, ha! Say, Seth, you ain’t smart, not wuth a cent. She come back ’cos she’s jest bustin’ to hear what you darsen’t tell her. She’s come back ’cos she’s a wummin, an’ couldn’t stay away when you wus sick an’ wounded to death. I know. I ain’t bin married fer five an’ twenty year an’ more wi’out gittin’ to the bottom o’ female natur’—I——”
“But she didn’t know I was sick, Rube.”
“Eh?”
Rube stood aghast at what he had said. Seth’s remark had, in his own way of thinking, “struck him all of a heap.” He realized in a flash where his blundering had led him. He had run past himself 243 in his enthusiasm, and given Ma’s little scheme away, and, for the moment, the enormity of his offence robbed him of the power of speech. However, he pulled himself together with an effort.
“Guess I wus chawin’ more’n I could swaller,” he said ruefully. “Ma allus did say my head wus mostly mutton, an’ I kind o’ figger she has a power o’ wisdom. An’ it wus a dead secret—’tween her an’ me. Say, Seth, boy, you won’t give me away? Y’ see Ma’s mighty easy, but she’s got a way wi’ her, Ma has.”
The old man’s distress was painfully comical. The perspiration stood out on his rugged forehead in large beads, and his kindly eyes were full of a great trouble. Seth’s next remark came in the form of an uncompromising question.
“Then Ma wrote an’ told her?”
“Why, yes, if it comes to that I guess she must have.”