Jeb looked relieved."Then she'd be in the way.Two women about always fights--and Keziah's got the Ferguson temper.She's afraid of me, but now and then she fergits and has a tantrum."Jeb looked at her with a smile and a frown."Perk up a little,"he more than half ordered."I don't want Keziah jeerin' at me."Susan made a pitiful effort to smile.He eyed it sourly, grunted, gave the mare a cut with the whip that caused her to leap forward in a gallop."Whoa!" he yelled."Whoa--damn you!"And he sawed cruelly at her mouth until she quieted down.Aturning and they were before a shallow story-and-a-half frame house which squatted like an old roadside beggar behind a weather-beaten picket fence.The sagging shingle roof sloped abruptly; there were four little windows downstairs and two smaller upstairs.The door was in the center of the house; a weedy path led from its crooked step, between two patches of weedy grass, to the gate in the fence.
"Whoa!" shouted Jeb, with the double purpose of stopping the mare and informing the house of his arrival.Then to Susan: "You git down and I'll drive round to the barn yonder." He nodded toward a dilapidated clapboard structure, small and mean, set between a dirty lopsided straw heap and a manure heap."Go right in and make yourself at home.Tell Keziah who you air.I'll be along, soon as I unhitch and feed the mare."Susan was staring stupidly at the house--at her new home.
"Git down," he said sharply."You don't act as if your hearin'
or your manners was much to brag on."
He felt awkward and embarrassed with this delicately bred, lovely child-woman in the, to him, wonderfully fine and fashionable dress.To hide his nervousness and to brave it out, he took the only way he knew, the only way shy people usually know--the way of gruffness.It was not a ferocious gruffness for a man of his kind; but it seemed so to her who had been used to gentleness only, until these last few days.His grammar, his untrained voice, his rough clothes, the odor of stale sweat and farm labor he exhaled, made him horrible to her--though she only vaguely knew why she felt so wretched and why her body shrank from him.
She stepped down from the sulky, almost falling in her dizziness and blindness.Jeb touched the mare with the whip and she was alone before the house--a sweet forlorn figure, childish, utterly out of place in those surroundings.On the threshold, in faded and patched calico, stood a tall gaunt woman with a family likeness to Jeb.She had thin shiny black hair, a hard brown skin, high cheekbones and snapping black eyes.When her thin lips parted she showed on the left side of the mouth three large and glittering gold teeth that in the contrast made their gray, not too clean neighbors seem white.
"Howdy!" she called in a tone of hostility.
Susan tried in vain to respond.She stood gazing.
"What d'ye want?"
"He he told me to go in," faltered Susan.She had no sense of reality.It was a dream--only a dream--and she would awaken in her own clean pretty pale-gray bedroom with Ruth gayly calling her to come down to breakfast.
"Who are you?" demanded Keziah--for at a glance it was the sister.
"I'm--I'm Susan Lenox."
"Oh--Zeke Warham's niece.Come right in." And Keziah looked as if she were about to bite and claw.
Susan pushed open the latchless gate, went up the short path to the doorstep."I think I'll wait till he comes," she said.
"No.Come in and sit down, Miss Lenox." And Keziah drew a rush-bottomed rocking chair toward the doorway.Susan was looking at the interior.The lower floor of the house was divided into three small rooms.This central room was obviously the parlor--the calico-covered sofa, the center table, the two dingy chromos, and a battered cottage organ made that certain.
On the floor was a rag carpet; on the walls, torn and dirty paper, with huge weather stains marking where water had leaked from the roof down the supporting beams.Keziah scowled at Susan's frank expression of repulsion for the surroundings.
Susan seated herself on the edge of the chair, put her bundle beside her.
"I allow you'll stay to dinner," said Keziah.
"Yes," replied Susan.
"Then I'll go put on some more to cook."
"Oh, no--please don't--I couldn't eat anything--really, Icouldn't." The girl spoke hysterically.
Just then Jeb came round the house and appeared in the doorway.
He grinned and winked at Susan, looked at his sister."Well, Keziah," said he, "what d'ye think of her?""She says she's going to stay to dinner, " observed Keziah, trying to maintain the veneer of manners she had put on for company.
The young man laughed loudly."That's a good one--that is!" he cried, nodding and winking at Susan."So you ain't tole her? Well, Keziah, I've been and gone and got married.And there _she_ is.""Shut up--you fool!" said Keziah.And she looked apologetically at their guest.But the expression of Susan's face made her catch her breath."For the Lord's sake!" she ejaculated."She ain't married _you!_""Why not?" demanded Jeb."Ain't this a free country? Ain't I as good as anybody?"Keziah blew out her breath in a great gust and seated herself on the tattered calico cover of the sofa.Susan grew deathly white.
