the mantel, Mr. Gant—but that was when he got the clock, all right—I guess he thought it would pacify her when she started out to scold him for gettin’drunk and bein’late.”
“Yes,” said Gant, who had listened without moving, staring at the ceiling, and with a faint grin printed at the corners of his mouth, “well do I remember: that was it, all right.”
“And then,” Eliza went on, “he lost the way comin’home—it had been snowin’, and I reckon it was getting dark, and he had been drinkin’—and instead of turnin’in on the road that went down by your place he kept goin’on until he passed Jake Schaefer’s farm—an’I guess Wes and you, poor child, kept follerin’where he led, thinkin’it was all right—and when he realized his mistake he said he was tired an’had to rest a while and—I’ll vow! to think he’d go and do a thing like that,” said Eliza, laughing again—“he lay right down in the snow, sir, with the clock beside him—and went sound to sleep.”
“Yes,” said Gant, “and the clock was broken.”
“Yes,” Eliza said, “she told me about that too—and how she heard you all come creepin’in real quiet an’easy-like about nine o’clock that night, when she and all the children were in bed—an’how she could hear him whisperin’to you and Wes to be quiet—an’how she heard you all come creepin’up the steps—and how he came tip-toein’in real easy-like an’laid the clock down on the bed—I reckon the glass had been broken out of it—hopin’she’d see it when she woke up in the morning an’wouldn’t scold him then for stayin’out—”
“Yes,” said Gant, still with the faint attentive grin, “and then the clock began to strike.”
“Whew-w!” cried Eliza, putting her finger underneath her broad nose-wing—“I know she had to laugh about it when she told it to me—she said that all of you looked so sheepish when the clock began to strike that she didn’t have the heart to scold him.”
And Gant, grinning faintly again, emitted a faint rusty cackle that sounded like “E’God!” and said: “Yes, that was it. Poor fellow.”
“But to think,” Eliza went on, “that he would have no more sense than to do a thing like that—to lay right down there in the snow an’go to sleep with you two children watchin’him. And I know how she told it, how she questioned you and Wes next day, and I reckon started in to scold you for not takin’better care of him, and how you told her,’Well, Mother, I thought that it would be all right. I kept steppin’where he stepped, I thought he knew the way.’And said she didn’t have the heart
