“Why, yes?” she said with question in her answer.
“I thought maybe you'd let me see Benny, first,” he suggested a little wistfully.
She almost laughed. “You dear boy! Go and see Benny on your way. Take him with you, if his father will let him go. You're both such great travelers. Your father's at the Wilkinses' yit, I reckon; they hain't finished with their cider, I don't believe. Go, now!”
The boy had been poising as if on winged feet, and now he flew. He came back to say at the door, “I don't believe I'll want any breakfast, mother; we had such a late supper.”
It was a thoughtful suggestion, and she said “No,” but before her answer came he had flown again.
The baby woke, and she cooed to it, and she went about the one room of the little cabin trying to put it more in order than before. Some pieces of the moss in the chinking of the round logs near the chimney seemed loose, and she packed them tighter. As she worked she sang. She sang a hymn, but it was a hymn of thanksgiving.
The doorway darkened, and she turned to see the figure of her brother black in the light.
“I see, you've heard the news,” he said grimly. “I was afraid I might find you making a show of mourning. I don't pretend to any. I haven't had such a load off me since that rascal first come back.”
She answered resentfully, “What makes you so glad, David? He didn't come back to make you drive your husband away!”
“I was always afraid he might make me kill him. He tried hard enough, and sometimes I thought he might. But blessed be the Lord, he's dead. They're holding a funeral for him in the Temple. The news is all through the Creek. I suppose you know how Jane has fixed it up with James Redfield. I feel to be sorry for Hughey Blake; but he never could have mastered her. She's got an awful will, Jane has. But James has got an awful will too, as strong as Jane—”