The child cried, and she went in, but she had no need to comfort it except with a word. Jane had come to the little one, and was stooping above it, and cooing to it motherwise, and cuddling it to her body while it drowsed away to silence.
“You mind her, Jane,” the mother said, and she lifted the pot of coffee from the bed of coals, sending a dim glow into the room to meet the dawn at the open door. She put some sugar into the bowl she got from its shelf, and covered it with a piece of cold corn-pone, and then went out to Dylks who had remained on his knees, and now stretched out his trembling hands toward her.
She did not speak, but poured the bowl full of the steaming coffee, and watched him while he gulped half of it down. Then he reached eagerly for the bread. “Is it hot?” he asked.
“No, it ain't,” the woman said. “You can eat cold pone, I reckon, can't you?”
“Oh, yes; oh, yes, and glad to get it. Only I thought—” He stopped and washed down the mouthful he had torn from the cake with a draft of the coffee which emptied the bowl. She filled it mechanically from the pot in her hand, and he drank again more slowly, and devoured the pone as he drank.
“Now,” he said, “I should be all right if it wasn't for my head where they tore out my hair. It burns like fire.”
She bent over him and looked at the wound unflinchingly. “I can't see very good in this light; if I only had some goose-grease—but I reckon hog's lard will do. Hold on till I can wash it.”
“Oh, Nancy,” he moaned gratefully.
She was gone rather long and there was talk within and the cooing and babble of the child. When she came out with a basin of warm water and some lard in a broken saucer in her hands, and a towel caught under her arm, he suggested, “I heard you talking with some one, Nancy.”
“And I suppose it scared you,” she answered unsparingly. “Well, you may thank your stars it wasn't Laban. I do believe he'd kill you, meek as he is.”