These remarks, uttered in an oracular tone, were received with grave approbation by the half a dozen idlers gathered about the mesquite fire in Bishop's store. Old Bishop himself, sorting over some trace-chains behind the counter, nodded grimly, and then smiled, his wintry face grown suddenly tender.
“You've shore struck it, Newt,” assented Joe Trimble. “You never kin tell how ary one of 'em 'll ack under any succumstances.”
Jack Carter and Sid Northcutt, the only bachelors present, grinned and winked slyly at each other.
“You boys neenter to be so brash,” drawled Mr. Pinson's son-in-law, Sam Leggett, from his perch on a barrel of pecans; “jest you wait ontell Minty Cullum an' Loo Slater gits a tight holt! Them gals is ez meek ez lambs—now. But so was Mis' Pinson an' Mis' Trimble in their day an' time, I reckon. I know Becky Leggett was.”
“The studdies'-goin' woman on Jim-Ned,” continued Mr. Pinson, ignoring these interruptions, “is Mis' Cullum. An' yit, Tobe Cullum ain't no safeter than anybody else—considerin' of Sissy Cullum ez a wife!”
Mr. Trimble opened his lips to speak, but shut them again hastily, looking a little scared, and an awkward silence fell on the group.
For the shadow of Mrs. Cullum herself had advanced through the wide door-way, and lay athwart the puncheon floor; and that lady, a large, comfortable-looking, middle-aged person, with a motherly face and a kindly smile, after a momentary survey of the scene before her, walked briskly in. She shook hands across the counter with the storekeeper, and passed the time of day all around.
But Hines, the new clerk, shuffled forward eagerly to wait on her. Bud was a sallow-faced, thin-chested, gawky youth from the States, who had wandered into these parts in search of health and employment. He was not yet used to the somewhat drastic ways of Jim-Ned, and there was a homesick look in his watery blue eyes; he smiled bashfully at her while he measured off calico and weighed sugar, and he followed her out to the horse-block when she had concluded her lengthy spell of shopping.
“You better put on a thicker coat, Bud,” she said, pushing back her sunbonnet and looking down at him from the saddle before she moved off. “You've got a rackety cough. I reckon I'll have to make you some mullein surrup.”
“Oh, Mis' Cullum, don't trouble yourself about me,” Mr. Hines cried, gratefully, a lump rising in his throat as he watched her ride away.