“She wasn’t porely two year back when I was on my back with typhoid,” said Mrs. Thompson bitterly. “The report went out that I’d never git up agin, but she never come a-nigh me, nur sent no word.”
“Maybe she never heard of it,” said Ewebanks. “They had a lot to do over thar about that time in one way and another. One o’ the gals was marryin’ of a banker, an’ t’other the Governor’s son, an’ yore brother-in-law, up to his death, was in politics, an’ they was constant a-givin’ parties an’ a-havin’ big company an’ the like. We-uns that don’t carry on at sech a rate ortn’t to be judges. I’m of the opinion that you ort to go, Mrs. Thompson. Ef she dies you’ll always wish you’d laid aside the grudge.”
The old woman glanced up at her cabin and awkwardly wiped her mouth with her bare hand.
“It seems sech a short time sence me’n her was childern together,” she mused. “We was on the same level then, an’ I never loved anybody more’n I did her. She was the purtiest gal in the neighborhood, an’ as sharp as a briar. Squire Farnhill tuck a likin’ to ’er, an’, as he had no childern o’ his own, he offered to adopt ’er an’ give ’er a home an’ education. She was a great stay-at-home an’ we had to actually beg ’er to go. We knowed it was best, fer pa was weighted down with debt an’ was a big drinker. She was soon weaned from us an’ ’fore she was seventeen Colonel Frank Hansard married ’er an’ tuck ’er over to his big plantation in Fannin’. We had our matters to look after, an’ they had the’rn. It begun that way, an’ it’s kept up.”
“I don’t know how true it is,” ventured Ewebanks, “but I have heard that her husband was a proud, stuck-up, ambitious man, an’ that he wished to cut off communication betwixt you two; but he’s dead an’ out o’ the way now.”
“Yes, but sometimes childern take after the’r fathers,” said the widow, “an’, right or wrong, it’s natural fer a mother to sympathize with her offspring. I’m sorter afeard the family wouldn’t want me even at ’er deathbed. Now, ef they had jest ’a’ sent me word that she was low, or——”
“I’d be fer doin’ my duty accordin’ to my own lights,” declared Ewebanks, when he saw she was going no further. “I don’t know as I’d be bothered about what them gals, or the’r husbands, thought at sech a serious time.”
She nodded as if she agreed with him, and turned to go. “Joe’s waitin’ fer his supper,” she said. “I’ll study about it, Jim. I couldn’t go till tomorrow, anyway. But, Jim Ewebanks—” she hesitated for a moment, and then she looked at him squarely—“Jim, I want to tell you that I think you are a powerful good man. Yo’re a Christian o’ the right sort, an’ I’m glad you are my neighbor.”
II
That night Mrs. Thompson had a visit from Mrs. Ewebanks, accompanied by her daughter Mary Ann, a fair slip of a creature of twelve years. Mary Ann was always her mother’s companion on her social rounds in the neighborhood. She was a very timid child and was never known to open her mouth on any of these visits. They took the chairs offered them before the fire. It was at once evident from Mrs. Ewebanks’s manner that she had come to advise her neighbor, and she showed by her disregard for oral approaches that she was going to reach her point by a short cut.