“I’m gwine ter git up,” she answered. “I’m not sick; I jest laid down ter rest. I must git the house straight. Mary and Jane hain’t no hands at housework ‘thout I stand over ‘em, and Jake an’ his paw is continually a-fussin’. I feel stronger already; ef you ’ll go in t’other room I ’ll rise. They ’ll never fix you nothin’ ter eat, nur nowhar to sleep. I reckon you ’ll have to lie with Jake, like you useter, tel I can fix better. Things is in a awful mess sence I got porely.” He went into the front room. The old man had brought his satchel in. He had opened it in a chair, and was coolly examining the contents in the firelight. Jake and the two girls stood looking on. Laramore stared at the old man, but the latter did not seem at all abashed. Finally he closed the satchel and put it on the floor. In a few minutes Mrs. King came in. She blew out the candle, and as she crossed to the mantelpiece she carefully extinguished the smoking wick. The change in her was more noticeable to her son than it had been a few minutes before. She looked very frail and white in her faded black cotton gown. Her shoes were worn and her bare feet showed through the holes. “Mary,” she asked, “have you put on the supper?” “Yes’m; but it hain’t tuk up yit.” The girl went into the next room, which was used for kitchen and dining-room in one, and her mother followed her. In a few minutes the old woman came to the door. “Walk out, all of you,” she said, wearily. “Luke, you ’ll have to put up with what is set before you; hog-meat is mighty sca’ce this yeer. Just at fattenin’ time our hogs tuk the cholera an’ six was found dead in one day. Meat is fetchin’ fifteen cents a pound in town.” II |After supper Laramore left his mother and sisters removing the dishes from the table and went out. He did not want to be left alone with his stepfather. He crossed the little brook that ran behind the cabin, and leaned against the rail fence which surrounded the pine-pole corn-crib. He could easily leave them in their poverty and ignorance, and return to the great intellectual world from which he had come--the world which understood and honored him; but, after all, could he do it now that he had seen his mother? The cabin door shone out a square of red light against the blackness of the hill and the silent pines beyond. He heard Jake whistling a tune he had whistled long ago when they had worked in the fields together, and the creaking of the puncheon floor as the family moved about within. A figure appeared in the door. It was his mother, and she was coming out to search for him. “Here I am, mother,” he said, as she advanced through the darkness; “look out and don’t get your feet wet!”