"We didn't see the man--"
"Little woman, skinny-lookin; pootty tonguey?"
"We didn't see her, eitha; but I guess we hea'd her at the back of the
house."
"Lot o' children, about as big as pa'tridges, runnin' round in the
bushes?"
"Yes! And a very pretty-appearing girl; about thi'teen or fou'teen, I
should think."
The farmer pulled his fork out of the ground, and planted it with his
person at new slopes in the figure of a letter A, rather more upright
than before. "Yes; it's them," he said. "Ha'n't been in the neighbahood a
great while, eitha. Up from down Po'tland way, some'res, I guess. Built
that house last summer, as far as it's got, but I don't believe it's
goin' to git much fa'tha."
"Why, what's the matta?" demanded Mrs. Lander in an anguish of interest.
The man in the hay-field seemed to think it more dignified to include
Lander in this inquiry, and he said with a glimmer of the eye for him,
"Hea'd of do-nothin' folks?"
"Seen 'em, too," answered Lander, comprehensively.
"Well, that a'n't Claxon's complaint exactly. He a'n't a do-nothin'; he's
a do-everything. I guess it's about as bad." Lander glimmered back at the
man, but did not speak.
"Kind of a machinist down at the Mills, where he come from," the farmer
began again, and Mrs. Lander, eager not to be left out of the affair for
a moment, interrupted:
"Yes, Yes! That's what the gul said."
"But he don't seem to think't the i'on agreed with him, and now he's
goin' in for wood. Well, he did have a kind of a foot-powa tu'nin' lathe,
and tuned all sots o' things; cups, and bowls, and u'ns for fence-posts,
and vases, and sleeve-buttons and little knick-knacks; but the place bunt
down, here, a while back, and he's been huntin' round for wood, the whole
winta long, to make canes out of for the summa-folks. Seems to think that
the smell o' the wood, whether it's green or it's dry, is goin' to cure
him, and he can't git too much of it."
"Well, I believe it's so, Albe't!" cried Mrs. Lander, as if her husband
had disputed the theory with his taciturn back. He made no other sign of
controversy, and the man in the hay-field went on.
"I hea' he's goin' to put up a wind mill, back in an open place he's got,
and use the powa for tu'nin', if he eva gits it up. But he don't seem to
be in any great of a hurry, and they scrape along somehow. Wife takes in
sewin' and the girl wo'ked at the Middlemount House last season. Whole
fam'ly's got to tu'n in and help s'po't a man that can do everything."
The farmer appealed with another humorous cast of his eye to Lander; but
the old man tacitly refused to take any further part in the talk, which
began to flourish apace, in question and answer, between his wife and the
man in the hay-field. It seemed that the children had all inherited the
father's smartness. The oldest boy could beat the nation at figures, and
one of the young ones could draw anything you had a mind to. They were
all clear up in their classes at school, and yet you might say they
almost ran wild, between times. The oldest girl was a pretty-behaved
little thing, but the man in the hay-field guessed there was not very
much to her, compared with some of the boys. Any rate, she had not the
name of being so smart at school. Good little thing, too, and kind of
mothered the young ones.
Mrs. Lander, when she had wrung the last drop of information out of him,
let him crawl back to his work, mentally flaccid, and let her husband
drive on, but under a fire of conjecture and asseveration that was
scarcely intermitted till they reached their hotel. That night she talked
a long time about their afternoon's adventure before she allowed him to go
to sleep. She said she must certainly see the child again; that they must
drive down there in the morning, and ask her all about herself.
"Albe't," she concluded; "I wish we had her to live with us. Yes, I do! I
wonder if we could get her to. You know I always did want to adopt a
baby."
"You neva said so," Mr. Lander opened his mouth almost for the first
time, since the talk began.
"I didn't suppose you'd like it," said his wife.
"Well, she a'n't a baby. I guess you'd find you had your hands full,
takon' a half-grown gul like that to bring up."
"I shouldn't be afraid any," the wife declared. "She has just twined
herself round my heat. I can't get her pretty looks out of my eyes. I
know she's good."
"We'll see how you feel about it in the morning."
The old man began to wind his watch, and his wife seemed to take this for
a sign that the incident was closed, for the present at least. He seldom
talked, but there came times when he would not even listen. One of these
was the time after he had wound his watch. A minute later he had
undressed, with an agility incredible of his years, and was in bed, as
effectively blind and deaf to his wife's appeals as if he were already
asleep.