Mrs. Brown stood upon the steps anxiously awaiting the return of
her liege lord. She knew he had with him a large sum of money, or
should have, and she knew also that he was a man without business
methods. She had long since repented of the decision which sent him
to town. When the old battered hat and flour-covered coat loomed
up in the gloaming and confronted her, she stared with terror. The
next instant she had seized him.
“For the Lord sakes, Elder Brown, what ails you? As I live, if the
man ain’t drunk! Elder Brown! Elder Brown! for the life of me can’t
I make you hear? You crazy old hypocrite! you desavin’ old sinner!
you black-hearted wretch! where have you ben?”
The elder made an effort to wave her off.
“Woman,” he said, with grand dignity, “you forgit yus-sef; shu
know ware I’ve ben ’swell’s I do. Ben to town, wife, an’ see yer
wat I’ve brought—the fines’ hat, ole woman, I could git. Look’t
the color. Like goes ’ith like; it’s red an’ you’re red, an’
it’s a dead match. What yer mean? Hey! hole on! ole woman!—you!
Hannah!—you.” She literally shook him into silence.
“You miserable wretch! you low-down drunken sot! what do you mean
by coming home and insulting your wife?” Hannah ceased shaking him
from pure exhaustion.
“Where is it, I say? where is it?”
By this time she was turning his pockets wrong side out. From one
she got pills, from another change, from another packages.
“The Lord be praised, and this is better luck than I hoped! Oh,
elder! elder! elder! what did you do it for? Why, man, where is
Balaam?”
Thought of the beast choked off the threatened hysterics.
“Balaam? Balaam?” said the elder, groggily. “He’s in town. The
infernal ole fool ’sulted me, an’ I lef’ him to walk home.”
His wife surveyed him. Really at that moment she did think his mind
was gone; but the leer upon the old man’s face enraged her beyond
endurance.
“You did, did you? Well, now, I reckon you’ll laugh for some cause,
you will. Back you go, sir—straight back; an’ don’t you come home
’thout that donkey, or you’ll rue it, sure as my name is Hannah
Brown. Aleck!—you Aleck-k-k!”
A black boy darted round the corner, from behind which, with
several others, he had beheld the brief but stirring scene.
“Put a saddle on er mule. The elder’s gwine back to town. And don’t
you be long about it neither.”
“Yessum.” Aleck’s ivories gleamed in the darkness as he disappeared.
Elder Brown was soberer at that moment than he had been for hours.
“Hannah, you don’t mean it?”
“Yes, sir, I do. Back you go to town as sure as my name is Hannah
Brown.”
The elder was silent. He had never known his wife to relent on any
occasion after she had affirmed her intention, supplemented with
“as sure as my name is Hannah Brown.” It was her way of swearing.
No affidavit would have had half the claim upon her as that simple
enunciation.
So back to town went Elder Brown, not in the order of the early
morn, but silently, moodily, despairingly, surrounded by mental and
actual gloom.
The old man had turned a last appealing glance upon the angry
woman, as he mounted with Aleck’s assistance, and sat in the light
that streamed from out the kitchen window. She met the glance
without a waver.
“She means it, as sure as my name is Elder Brown,” he said,
thickly. Then he rode on.