“Toler’ble,” replied Mrs. Sanders, hesitatingly. “She’s been complainin’ some o’ headaches lately, an’ her appetite ain’t overly good, but she’s up an’ about, an’ will be powerful glad to see you. She talks about you a good deal of late. Jest atter yore brother Joe’s death she had ’im on her mind purty constant, but now she al’ays has some ‘n’ to say about Jim—that’s yore name, I believe?”
He nodded silently, not taking his eyes from the cow-lot. His valise rolled from his knees down on to the grass, and one of the children restored it to him.
“Yes, that is a fact,” put in Sanders. “She was talkin’ last Sunday about her two boys. She al’ays calls you the steady one. You ort to be sorter cautious. Old folks like her sometimes cayn’t stand good news any better ’n bad.”
“I ’ll be keerful.” His voice sounded husky and deep. “Does she—” he went on hesitatingly—“does she work fer you around the place?”
Sanders crossed his legs and cleared his throat. “That was the understandin’ when we agreed to take ‘er,” he said, rather consequentially. “She was to make ‘erse’f handy whenever she was able. My wife has had a risin’ on ’er arm an’ couldn’t cook, an’ we’ve had five ur six field hands here to the’r meals. The old critter was willin’ to do anything to git a place to stay. The’ wasn’t any-whar else fer ’er to go. She’s too old to do much, but she’s willin’ to put ’er hands to anything. We cayn’t complain. She gits peevish now an’ then, though, an’ ‘er eyesight an’ memory’s a-failin’, so that she makes mistakes in the cookin’. T’other day she salted the dough twice an’ clean furgot to put in sody.”
“She’s gittin’ into ’er second childhood,” added Mrs. Sanders, “an’ she ain’t got our ways in church notions, nuther. She’s a Baptist, you know, an’ b’lieves in emersion of the entire body an’ in close communion an’ sechlike, while the last one of us, down to little Sally thar, is Methodists. She goes whar we do to meetin’ ‘ca’se her church is too fer off an’ we use the hosses Sundays.”
Bradley’s face was hidden by the dusk and the brim of his slouch hat, and they failed to notice the hot flush that rose into his cheeks. He got up suddenly and put his valise on a chair. “I reckon I mought as well walk out to whar she is,” he said. “She won’t be apt to know me. I’ve turned out a beard an’ got gray sence she seed me.”
“I ’ll go’long with you.” But Mrs. Sanders touched her husband on the arm as he was rising. “It ‘u’d look more decent ef you’d leave ’em to the’rselves, Alf,” she whispered. He sat down without a word, and Bradley walked away in the dusk to meet his mother. There was a blur before the strong man’s eyes, and a strange weakness came over him as he leaned against the cow-lot fence and tried to think how he would make himself known to her. Beneath the low shed, a part of the crude stable, he saw the figure of a woman crouched down under a cow. “So, so, Brin’!” she was saying softly. “Cayn’t you stan’ still a minute? That ain’t no way to do. So, so!”
His heart sank. It was her voice, but it was shrill and quivering, and he recognized it only as one does a familiar face under a mask of age. Just then, with a sudden exclamation, she sprang up quickly and placed her pail on the ground out of the cow’s reach. He comprehended the situation at a glance. The calf had got through the bars and was sucking its mother.
“Lord, what ’ll I do?” cried the old woman, in dismay; and catching the calf around the neck, she exerted all her strength to separate it from the cow.