Amanda followed him. “Jim Hoag ain't the only person round here that's got a mean spirit,” she commented. “I'm thinkin' now about Tobe Williams's wife, Carrie; an' Jeff ain't the only one with a hot temper—I'm thinkin' now about myself.”
“You!” Paul smiled. “You were always as pleasing as a basket of chips.”
“You don't know me, boy.” Amanda subdued an inclination to smile. “I don't reckon I git mad oftener than once a year, but when I do I take a day off an' raise enough sand to build a court-house. I've already had my annual picnic since I got back.”
“I'm sure you are joking now,” Paul said, experimentally, an expression of amused curiosity clutching his face. “You couldn't have got angry at Mrs. Williams.”
“Didn't I, though—the triflin' hussy! She driv' by the day we was housed in that pore shack of a cabin, an' put up a tale about needin' somebody to help 'er out with her house-work an' bein' in sech a plight with her big brood o' children that I swallowed my pride an' agreed to help 'er. I mention pride because me'n Carrie went to school together an' had the same beaus. She roped one in, an' is entirely welcome to 'im, the Lord knows if she doesn't. Yes, I swallowed my pride an' went. I never hired out before, but I went. I reckon we was both lookin' at the thing different. I had the feelin' that I was jest, you know, helpin' a old friend out of a tight; an' well, I reckon, from the outcome, that Carrie thought she had hired a nigger wench.”
“Oh, no, don't put it that way,” Paul protested, half seriously, though his aunt's unwonted gravity amused him highly.
“Well, she acted plumb like it,” Amanda averred, her cheeks flushed, her eyes flashing. “All the way out to her house she was talkin' about Jeff's flat come-down, an' Addie's sad looks, an'—an', above all, our cabin. Said thar was a better one behind the barn, on her land, but she believed Tobe was goin' to pack fodder in it, an' so she reckoned we'd as well not apply for it. She kept talkin' about this here new cottage. She'd been through it, she said, an' it was fine, an' no doubt Bob Mayburn would rent it to some rich town family to pass the summers in. In that case she thought we'd naturally feel uncomfortable—she knowed she would if she was in our fix, an' have to live right up ag'in' folks that was so different. Take my word for it, Paul, she got me so all-fired hot that I wanted to jump over the buggy-wheels an' walk back home. I'd 'a' done it, too, but for one thing.”
“What was that?” Paul inquired, still amused. “Pride,” was the half-laughing answer. “Do you know the awkwardest predicament on earth is to git whar you are as mad as old Harry, an' at the same time would rather die on the rack than let it be knowed? Well, that woman had me in that fix. She was playin' with me like a kitten with a dusty June-bug. She knowed what she was sayin' all right, an' she knowed, too, that I wouldn't slap 'er in the mouth—because I was too much of a lady. But if she didn't cut gaps in me an' rub brine in no woman ever clawed an' scratched another.”
“Too bad!” Paul said, biting his lips. “I am wondering how it ended.”
“You may well wonder,” Amanda went on. “I wanted to throw up the job, but was ashamed to let 'er see how mad I was. It was even wiles after we got to her house. She tuck me straight to the kitchen, an' with the air of a queen she p'inted to the nastiest lot o' pots an' pans you ever laid eyes on, an' said she reckoned I'd have to give 'em a good scrubbin' fust, as they was caked with grease. Then she told me what she wanted for supper. Tobe liked string-beans, an' none 'had been fetched from the patch, an' I'd have plenty o' time to pick 'em, an' so on, an' so on. I saw I was in a hole an' tried to make the best of it. But when I come to put the supper on the table that she had told her little girl to set the plates on I seed thar was just places fixed for the family. You see, she thought I'd wait till that triflin' gang was through an' set down to scraps. Thar was one other thing Carrie Williams expected to happen, but it didn't take place.”