The world is callous and cold; but, as the shifty spectre at last pointed me, unwilling, homeward, he murmured, with tears in his eyes: "I never found sech an intellergent listener as you be—not in the whole length and breadth of Californy."
VIII
"VESTY 'S MARRIED"
"Vesty 's married Gurd! Vesty 's gone and got married to Gurd!" said the children, big and joyful with news, on their way to school.
Yes, that was what she had done! I leaned heavily for a moment where I stood. That was Vesty!
Oh, child-madness! Sweet, lost child! Oh, pity of the world! and I crawling on with such a hurt; I did not think that should have wrung me so.
I was getting near her door; not anywhere else could I have gone. She would be at the Rafes' cottage now—so easily do the Basin brides move, without wedding journey or trousseau.
The wash-tubs and cooking-stove stood at one end of the long, low-raftered room, the cabinet organ and violins at the other. Captain Rafe and the boys were out, hauling their sea-traps, and Vesty had been doing the washing that they were wont to do for themselves; the mother, like her own, being dead.
The room was nice as I had never seen it before, and Vesty was putting some pitiful little ornaments to rights at the cabinet-organ end.