Westover had his tea with the family, but nothing was said or done to
show that any of them resented or even knew of what had happened to the
boy from him. Jeff himself seemed to have no grudge. He went out with
Westover, when the meal was ended, and sat on the steps of the porch
with him, watching the painter watch the light darken on the lonely
heights and in the lonely depths around. Westover smoked a pipe, and the
fire gleamed and smouldered in it regularly with his breathing; the boy,
on a lower' step, pulled at the long ears of his dog and gazed up at
him.
They were both silent till the painter asked: “What do you do here when
you're not trying to scare little children to death?”
The boy hung his head and said, with the effect of excusing a long
arrears of uselessness: “I'm goin' to school as soon as it commences.”
“There's one branch of your education that I should like to undertake
if I ever saw you at a thing like that again. Don't you feel ashamed of
yourself?”
The boy pulled so hard at the dog's ear that the dog gave a faint yelp
of protest.
“They might 'a' seen that I had him by the collar. I wa'n't a-goin' to
let go.”
“Well, the next time I have you by the collar I won't let go, either,”
said the painter; but he felt an inadequacy in his threat, and he
imagined a superfluity, and he made some haste to ask: “who are they?”
“Whitwell is their name. They live in that little house where you
took them. Their father's got a piece of land on Zion's Head that he's
clearin' off for the timber. Their mother's dead, and Cynthy keeps
house. She's always makin' up names and faces,” added the boy. “She
thinks herself awful smart. That Franky's a perfect cry-baby.”
“Well, upon my word! You are a little ruffian,” said Westover, and he
knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “The next time you meet that poor
little creature you tell her that I think you're about the shabbiest
chap I know, and that I hope the teacher will begin where I left off
with you and not leave blackguard enough in you to--”
He stopped for want of a fitting figure, and the boy said: “I guess the
teacher won't touch me.”
Westover rose, and the boy flung his dog away from him with his foot.
“Want I should show you where to sleep?”
“Yes,” said Westover, and the boy hulked in before him, vanishing
into the dark of the interior, and presently appeared with a lighted
hand-lamp. He led the way upstairs to a front room looking down upon the
porch roof and over toward Zion's Head, which Westover could see dimly
outlined against the night sky, when he lifted the edge of the paper
shade and peered out.
The room was neat, with greater comfort in its appointments than he
hoped for. He tried the bed, and found it hard, but of straw, and not
the feathers he had dreaded; while the boy looked into the water-pitcher
to see if it was full; and then went out without any form of goodnight.
Westover would have expected to wash in a tin basin at the back door,
and wipe on the family towel, but all the means of toilet, such as
they were, he found at hand here, and a surprise which he had felt at
a certain touch in the cooking renewed itself at the intelligent
arrangements for his comfort. A secondary quilt was laid across the foot
of his bed; his window-shade was pulled down, and, though the window
was shut and the air stuffy within, there was a sense of cleanliness in
everything which was not at variance with the closeness.
The bed felt fresh when he got into it, and the sweet breath of the
mountains came in so cold through the sash he had lifted that he was
glad to pull the secondary quilt up over him. He heard the clock tick
in some room below; from another quarter came the muffled sound of
coughing; but otherwise the world was intensely still, and he slept deep
and long.