“Law me! I never could git that much,” she said, and she held out her hand for the pail, but he swung it down at his side. “I ’ll tote it,” he said; “I’m a-goin’ back to the house. I reckon I ’ll put up thar fer the night—that is, ef they ’ll take me in.”
“I’ve jest been lookin’ at you an’ wonderin’,” she said, reflectively, after they had passed through the bars. “My hearin’ an’ eyesight is bad, an’ so is my memory of faces, but it seems like I’ve seed somebody some’r’s that favors you mightily.”
He walked on silently. Only the little corn-patch was between them and the group in the yard. He could hear Sanders’s drawling voice, and caught a gleam of the kitchen fire through the alder-bushes.
“You better le’ me take the bucket,” she said, stopping abruptly and showing some embarrassment. “Yo’ ‘re mighty gentlemanly; but Alf’s wife al’ays gits mad when I make at all free with company. The whole family pokes fun at me, an’ ‘lows I am childish, an’ too fond o’ talkin’. They expect me jest to keep my mouth shet an’ never have a word to say. It cayn’t be helped, I reckon, but it’s a awful way fer a old body to live.”
“That’s a fact!” he blurted out, impulsively, still holding to the pail, on which she had put her hand. “It’s the last place on earth fer you.”
“I hain’t had one single day o’ enjoyment sence I came here,” she continued, encouraged to talk by his manifest sympathy. “I reckon I ort to be thankful, an’ beggars mustn’t be choosers, as the feller said; fer no other family in the county would take me in. But it hain’t no place fer a old woman that likes peace an’ rest at my time o’ life. I work hard all day, an’ at night I need sound sleep; but they put the children in my bed, an’ they keep up a kickin’ an’ a squirmin’ all night. Then, the’ ain’t no other old women round here, an’ I git mighty lonesome. Sometimes I come as nigh as pease givin’ up entirely.”
“Thank the Lord, you won’t have to stand it any longer!” he exclaimed, hotly.
She started from him in astonishment, and began to study his features. At that juncture two of Sanders’s little girls drew near inquisitively. “Here!” and he held the pail out to them. “Take this milk to yore mammy.” One of them, half frightened, took the pail, and both scampered back to the house.
“Yo’ ‘re a curi’s sort of a man,” she said, with a serious kind of chuckle, as she drew her shawl up over her white head. “I wouldn’t ‘a’ done that fer a dollar. You skeered Sally out ’n a year’s growth. I used to have a boy, that went away West ten year ago, who used to fly up like you do, an’ you sorter put me in mind of him, you do. He was the best one I had. I could allus count on him fer help. He was as steady-goin’ as a clock. He never was heerd from, an’ the general belief is that he died out thar.”
There was a moment’s pause. He seemed trying to think of some way to reveal his identity. “You ortn’t to pay attention to everything you hear,” he ventured, awkwardly. “Who knows? Mebby he’s still alive—sech things ain’t so almighty oncommon. Seems like I’ve heerd tell o’ a feller named Bradley out thar.”