VIII
THERE was a quilting-party at Porter's that day. Cynthia had invited some of her friends to help her, and the quilt, a big square of colored scraps, more or less artistically arranged in stars, crescents, and floral wreaths, occupied the centre of the sitting-room. It was stitched to a frame made of four smooth wooden bars which were held together at the corners by pegs driven into gimlet-holes and which rested on the backs of four chairs. The workers sat on two sides of it, and stitched with upward and downward strokes, towards the centre, the quilt being rolled up as the work progressed.
Hattie Mayhew was there, and Kitty Welborn, and two or three others. As usual, they were teasing Cynthia about the young preacher.
“I know he's dead in love,” laughed Kitty Welborn. “He really can't 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 big, sad eyes like his.”
“I certainly would go up to the mourners' bench every time he called for repentant sinners,” said Hattie Mayhew. “I went up once while he was exhorting, and he didn't even take my hand. He turned me over to Sister Perdue, that snaggletoothed old maid who always passes the wine at sacrament, and that done me.”
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 raw-hide 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 door-way 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' another 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 sense I left here. I don't know whether I could 'a' got waited on, anyway, fer the postmaster hisse'f was runnin' round outside like a chicken with its head chopped 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 seed anything o' my fly-flap? When company's here you an' Cynthia jest try yoreselves on seein' how many things you kin stuff in cracks an' out-o'-way places. I'm gittin' sick an' tired o'—”