“I know she’s the apple of his eye,” laughed Kitty Welborn. “He really can’t, as you said the other night, keep from looking at her during preaching. I noticed it particularly one Sunday not long ago and told Matt Digby that I’d be sure to get religion if a man bored it into me with eyes like his.”
“I certainly would go up to the mourners’ bench every time he called up repentant sinners,” said Hattie Mayhew. “I went up once while he was exhorting and he turned me over to Sister Perdue, that snaggle-toothed old maid. He didn’t even offer his hand.”
Cynthia said nothing, but she smiled good-naturedly as she rose from her chair and went to the side of the quilt near the crudely screened fireplace to see that the work was rolled evenly on the frame. While thus engaged her father came into the room, vigorously fanning himself with his old slouch hat. The girls knew he had been to the village, and all asked eagerly if he had brought them any letters.
“No, I clean forgot to go to the office,” he made slow answer as he threw himself into a big armchair with a rawhide bottom, near a window on the shaded side of the house.
“Why, father,” his daughter chided him, “you promised the girls faithfully to call at the office. I think that was very neglectful of you when you knew they would be here to dinner.”
“And he usually has a good memory,” spoke up Mrs. Porter, appearing in the doorway leading to the dining-room and kitchen. She was rolling flakes of dough from her lank hands and glanced at her husband reprovingly. “Nathan, what did you go and do that way for, when you knew Cynthia was trying to make her friends pass a pleasant day?”
“Well, I clean forgot it,” Porter said, quite undisturbed. “To tell you the truth, thar was so much excitement on all hands, with this un runnin’ in with fresh news, an’ that un sayin’ that maybe it was all a false alarm, that the post-office plumb slipped out o’ my head. Huh, I hain’t thought post-office once sence I left here! I don’t know whether I could ’a’ got in thar anyway, fer the Postmaster hisse’f was runnin’ round like a camp-meetin’ chicken with its head cut off. Besides, I tell you, gals, I made up my mind to hit the grit. I never was much of a hand to want to see wholesale bloodshed. Moreover, I’ve heard of many a spectator a-gittin’ shot in the arms an’ legs or some vital spot. No, I sorter thought I’d come on. Mandy, have you seen anything o’ my fly-flap? When company comes you an’ Cynthia jest try yoreselves on seein’ how many things you kin put out o’ place, an’ I’m gittin’ sick an’ tired o’——”
“Nathan, what’s going on in town?” broke in Mrs. Porter. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know what’s goin’ on now,” Porter drawled out as he slapped at a fly on his bald pate with an angry hand. “I say I don’t know what’s goin’ on now; but I know what was jest gittin’ ready to go on. I reckon the coroner’s goin’ on with the inquest ef he ain’t afeared of an ambush. Jeff Wade—” Porter suddenly bethought himself of something, and he rose, passed through the composite and palpable stare of the whole room and went to the clock on the mantelpiece and opened it. “Thar!” he said impatiently. “I wonder what hole or crack you-uns have stuck my chawin’ tobacco in. I put it right in the corner of this clock, right under the turpentine bottle.”
“There’s your fool tobacco!” Mrs. Porter exclaimed, running forward and taking the dark plug from beneath the clock. “Fill your mouth with it; maybe it will unlock your jaw. What is the trouble at Springtown?”