room, his hands immense and passive at his side. But suddenly he startled her again by speaking, a voice so quiet and low that he might have been talking to himself.
“Father died the year before the war,” he said, “when I was nine years old. I never got to know him very well. I guess Mother had a hard time of it. There were seven of us—and nothing but that little place to live on—and some of us too young to help her much—and George away at war. She spoke pretty hard to us sometimes—but I guess she had a hard time of it. It was a tough time for all of us,” he muttered, “I tell you what, it was.”
“Yes,” Eliza said, “I guess it was. I know, she told me—I talked to her, you know, the time we went there on our honeymoon—whew! what about it?” she shrieked faintly and put her finger up to her broad nose-wing with the same sly gesture—“it was all I could do to keep a straight face sometimes—why, you know, the way she had of talkin’—the expressions she used—oh! came right out with it, you know—sometimes I’d have to turn my head away so she wouldn’t see me laughin’—says, you know,’I was left a widow with seven children to bring up, but I never took charity from no one; as I told’em all, I’ve crawled under the dog’s belly all my life; now I guess I can get over its back.’”
“Yes,” said Gant with a faint grin. “Many’s the time I’ve heard her say that.”
“But she told it then, you know,” Eliza went on in explanatory fashion, “about your father and how he’d done hard labour on a farm all his life and died—well, I reckon you’d call it consumption.”
“Yes,” said Gant. “That was it.”
“And,” Eliza said reflectively, “I never asked—of course, I didn’t want to embarrass her—but I reckon from what she said, he may have been—well, I suppose you might say he was a drinkin’man.”
“Yes,” said Gant, “I guess he was.”
“And I know she told it on him,” said Eliza, laughing again, and passing one finger slyly at the corner of her broad nose-wing, “how he went to town that time—to Brant’s Mill, I guess it was—and how she was afraid he’d get to drinkin’, and she sent you and Wes along to watch him and to see he got home again—and how he met up with some fellers there and, sure enough, I guess he started drinkin’and stayed away too long—and then, I reckon he was afraid of what she’d say to him when he got back—and that was when he bought the clock—it’s that very clock upon
