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“Say,” called Morris suddenly, “won’t you come up here and help me raise my staging?”

The man looked up with a muttered curse of surprise. “Who the hell y’ take me for? Hired man?” he asked, and then, after a moment, continued, in a tone which was an insult: “You don’t want to rip off the whole broad side of that roof. Ain’t y’ got any sense? Come a rain, it’ll raise hell with my hay.”

“It ain’t going to rain,” Morris replied. He wanted to give him a sharp reply, but concluded not to do so. This was evidently the husband. His romance was very short.

“Tom, won’t you call the man in?” asked Mrs. Miner, as her husband came up to the kitchen door.

“No, call ‘im yourself. You’ve got a gullet.”

Mrs. Miner’s face clouded a little, but she composed herself. “Morty, run out and tell the carpenter to come to dinner.”

“Boss is in a temper,” Morris thought, as he listened to Miner’s reply. He came up to the well, where Morty brought him a clean towel, and waited to show him into the kitchen.

Miner was just sitting down to the table when Morris entered. His sleeves were rolled up. He had his old white hat on his head. He lounged upon one elbow on the table. His whole bearing was swinish.

“What do I care?” he growled, as if in reply to some low-voiced warning his wife had uttered. “If he don’t like it, he can lump it, and if you don’t like my ways,” he said, turning upon her, “all you’ve got to do is to say so, and I git out.”

Morris was amazed at all this. He could not persuade himself that he had rightly understood what had been said. There was something beneath the man’s words which puzzled him and forbade his inquiry. He sat down near the oldest child and opposite Mrs. Miner. Miner began to eat, and Morris was speaking pleasantly to the child nearest him, when he heard an oath and a slap. He looked up to see Miner’s hat falling from Mrs. Miner’s cheek.

She had begun a silent grace, and her husband had thrown his hat in her face. She kept her eyes upon her plate, and her lips moved as if in prayer, though a flush of red streamed up her neck and covered her cheek.

Morris leaped up, his eyes burning into Miner’s face. “H’yere!” he shouted, “what’s all this? Did you strike her?”

“Set down!” roared Miner. “You’re too fresh.”

“I’ll let you know how fresh I am,” said the young fellow, shaking his brawny fist in Miner’s face.

Mrs. Miner rose, with a ghastly smile on her face, which was now as pale as it had been flushed. “Please don’t mind him; he’s only fooling.” Morris looked at her and understood a little of her feeling as a wife and mother. He sat down. “Well, I’ll let him know the weight of my fist, if he does anything more of that business when I’m around,” he said, looking at her, and then at her husband. “I didn’t grow up in a family where things like that go on. If you’ll just say the word, I–I’ll—-“

“Please don’t do anything,” she said, and he saw that he had better not, if he wished to shield her from further suffering. The meal proceeded in silence. Miner apparently gloried in what he had done.

The children were trembling with fear and could scarcely go on with their dinners. They dared not cry. Their eyes were fixed upon their father’s face, like the eyes of kittens accustomed to violence. The wife tried to conceal her shame and indignation. She thought she succeeded very well, but the big tears rolling down from her wide unseeing eyes, were pitiful to witness.

Morris ate his dinner in silence, not seeing anything further to do or say. His food choked him, and he found it necessary to drink great draughts of water.