PAGE 7
The Owner Of The Mill Farm
by
He would have done so then had he been on the ground, but he disdained taking the trouble to climb down. He planned to catch him when he came up to dinner. The more he thought of it the more his indignation waxed. As he grew to hate the man more, he began to entertain the suspicions, which Wilber confessed to in confidence, concerning the burning of the mill.
They had a cheerful meal together again, for Miner did not come in until one o’clock. During the nooning Morris finished spading the flower beds, in spite of Mrs. Miner’s entreaties that he should rest. It gave him great pleasure to work there with her and the children.
“You see, I’m lonesome here,” he explained. “Just out of school, and I miss the boys and girls. I don’t know anybody except a few of the carpenters here, and so–well, I kind of like it. I always helped around the house at home. It’s all fun for me, so don’t you say a word. I’ve got lots o’ muscle to spare, and you’re welcome to it.”
He spaded away without many words. The warm sun shone down upon them all, and they made a pretty group. Mrs. Miner, rake in hand, was pulverizing the beds as fast as he spaded, her face flushed and almost happy. The children were wrist-deep in the fresh earth, planting twigs and pebbles, their babble of talk some way akin to the cry of the woodpecker, the laugh of the robin, the twitter of the sparrow, the smell of spring, and the merry downpour of sunshine.
Mrs. Miner was silent. She was thinking how different her life would have been if her husband had only taken an interest in her affairs. She did not think of any one else as her husband, but only Miner in a different mood.
Morris went back to work. As the work neared the end, his determination to punish the scoundrel husband grew. His inclination to charge him with burning the mill grew stronger. He wondered if it wouldn’t serve as a club. “Now, sir,” he said, meeting Miner as he came out of the barn that night, “I’m done on the barn, but I’m not done on you. I’m goin’ to whale you till you won’t know yourself. I ought ‘o ‘a done it that first day at dinner.” He advanced upon Miner, who backed away, scared at something he saw in the young man’s eyes and something he heard in his inflexible tone of voice.
He thrust out his palm in a wild gesture. “Keep away from me! I’ll split your heart if you touch me!”
Morris advanced another step, his eyes looking straight into Miner’s with the level look of a tiger’s. “No, y’ won’t! You’re too much of an infernal, sneaky little whelp!”
At the word whelp, he cuffed him with his hammerlike fist, and Miner went down in a heap. He was so abject that the young man could only strike him with his open hand.
He took him by the shirt collar with his left hand and began to cuff him leisurely and terribly with his right. His blows punctuated his sentences. “You’re a little [whack] villain. I’ll thrash you till you won’t see out of your blasted eyes for a month! I can’t stand a man [here he jounced him up and down with his left hand, apparently with infinite satisfaction] who bullies his wife and children as you do [here he cuffed him again], and I’ll make it my business to even things up—-“
The prostrate man began to scream for help. He was livid with fear. He fancied murder in the blaze of his assailant’s eye.
“Help! help! Minnie!”
“Call her by her first name now, will yeh? will yeh? Call her out to help yeh! Do you think she will? I want to tell you, besides, I know something about that mill burning. It’s just like your contemptible mustard-seed of a soul to burn that mill!”