“You don’t drink often, I think. Why should you now? Was it trouble—about your child?”
“He wasn’t my child.”
“What!” exclaimed Lyndsay, puzzled; “how is that?”
“My wife was a widder, you see, and them was all her first man’s; I never had no child. ’T ain’t like it was my own child. He was awful spiled, that boy. I licked him two weeks this Sunday comin’ for makin’ fire by the wood-pile. Gosh, what a row Susie did make!”
“My God!” exclaimed Lyndsay.
The man understood him well enough.
“Oh, I don’t go to say I didn’t like him none. Lord, I’d done most anything to git that boy well. I wanted that money to help put him underground. It don’t cost much buryin’ up here, but it ain’t to be done for nothin’, and you’ve got to look ahead. There’s the minister’s got to be fetched, and—and—”
Here the man sat down on a stump, and putting a palm on each temple and an elbow on each knee, looked silently down at his mother earth.
Respect for the moods of men is one of the delicacies of the best manners. Lyndsay was still a minute. Then he put a hand on Joe’s shoulder.
“How else can we help you?”