“He's happy, and so will his wife be,” he said to himself. “But as for me, that's another matter. She's going to marry Hillhouse. Great God, how strange that seems! Cynthia and that man living together as man and wife!”
XLI
IT was almost dark when Pole reached his humble domicile. The mountain air was cool, and through the front window of the living-room he saw the flare of a big, cheerful fire. He went into the house, but his wife was not in sight. Looking into the bedroom, he saw the children sound asleep, their yellow heads all in a row.
“God bless 'em!” he said, fervently. “I reckon the'r mammy's down at the barn.” Going out at the back-door, he went to the cow-lot, and then he heard Sally's voice rising above the squealing of pigs and the cackling of hens. “So, so, Lil! can't you behave?” he heard her saying. “I git out o' all patience. I can't keep the brat out. I might as well give up, an' yet we've got to have milk.”
“What's the matter, Sally?” Pole called out, as he looked over the rail-fence.
“Why, I can't keep this fool calf away,” she said, turning to him, her tin pail in her hand, her face red with vexation. “The little imp is stealin' all the milk. He's had enough already to bust 'im wide open.”
Pole laughed merrily; there was much stored in his mind to make him joyous. “Let me git at the dern little skunk,” he said; and vaulting over the fence with the agility of an acrobat, he took the sleek, fawnlike creature in his strong arms and stood holding it against his breast as if it were an infant. “That's the way to treat 'im?” he cried. And carrying the animal to the fence, he dropped it on the outside. “Thar, you scamp!” he laughed; “you mosey around out here in the tater-patch till you l'arn some table manners.”
Sally laughed and looked at her husband proudly. “I'm glad you come when you did,” she said, “fer you wouldn't 'a' had any milk to go on yore mush; me'n' the childem have had our supper an' they are tucked away in bed.”