Part 12 (1/2)

Joe went to the tool-chest which stood in a corner of the kitchen and busied himself clattering over its contents. Presently he looked at Ollie, his hand on the open lid of the box.

”Did you see that long whetstone lying around anywhere, Ollie?” he asked.

She lifted her head with a little start. Joe never had called her familiarly by her name before. It always had been ”Missis Chase,”

distant and respectful.

”No, I haven't seen it, Joe,” she answered, the color leaving her cheeks.

”All right, Ollie,” said he, holding her eyes with steady gaze, until she s.h.i.+fted hers under the pain of it, and the questioning reproach.

Joe slammed down the lid of the tool-chest, as if with the intention of making as much noise as possible.

There was something in the way he had spoken her name that was stranger than the circ.u.mstance itself. Perhaps she felt the authority and the protection which Joe meant that his voice should a.s.sume; perhaps she understood that it was the word of a man. She was afraid of him at that moment, as she never had been afraid of Isom in all their married life.

”I suppose Isom put it away somewhere around the barn,” said Joe.

”Maybe he did, Joe.”

”I'll go down there and see if I can find it,” he said.

Ollie knew, as well as Joe himself, that he was making the whetstone the vehicle to carry his excuse for watching Morgan away from the farm, but she was not certain whether this sudden shrewdness was the deep understanding of a man, or the domineering spirit of a crude lad, jealous of his pa.s.sing authority.

The uncertainty troubled her. She watched him from the door and saw him approach Morgan, where he was backing his horse into the shafts.

”All right, is he?” asked Joe, stopping a moment.

Morgan was distant.

”I guess he'll live another day, don't worry about him,” said he, in surly voice.

”What time do you aim to be back today?” pursued Joe, entirely unmoved by Morgan's show of temper.

”Say, I'll set up a bulletin board with my time-table on it if you've got to have it, Mr. Overseer!” said Morgan, looking up from the buckling of a shaft-strap, his face coloring in anger.

”Well, you don't need to get huffy over it.”

”Mind your business then,” Morgan growled.

He didn't wait to discuss the matter farther, but got into the buggy without favoring Joe with as much as another glance, gave his horse a vindictive lash with the whip and drove off, leaving the gate open behind him.

Joe shut it, and turned back to his mowing.

Many a time he paused that morning in his labor, leaning on the snath of his scythe, in a manner of abstraction and seeming indolence altogether strange to him. There was a scene, framed by the brown casing of the kitchen door, with two figures in it, two clinging hands, which persisted in its disturbing recurrence in his troubled mind.

Ollie was on dangerous ground. How far she had advanced, he did not know, but not yet, he believed, to the place where the foulness of Morgan had defiled her beyond cleansing. It was his duty as the guardian of his master's house to watch her, even to warn her, and to stop her before she went too far.

Once he put down his scythe and started to go to the house, his mind full of what he felt it his duty to say.

Then there rose up that feeling of disparity between matron and youth which had held him at a distance from Ollie before. He turned back to his work with a blush upon his sun-scorched face, and felt ashamed. But it was not a thing to be deferred until after the damage had been done.

He must speak to her that day, perhaps when he should go in for dinner.