FullReads

“I brought this thinking as how maybe you might ‘a’-wanted–me to keep it,” he was going to say; but he checked himself and said: “might ‘a’-wanted it back.”

Before she could recover from the surprise of finding the book in her hand her own, he was gone. The words only came to her clearly as his retreating footsteps grew fainter and his tall figure faded in the darkening light. She made a hasty step or two after him, then checked herself and listened intently to see if he were not returning, and then, as only the katydids answered, threw herself flat on the ground and grovelled in the darkness.

There were few houses in the district or in the county where lights did not burn all that night. The gleam of the fire in Mrs. Stanley’s little house could be seen all night from the door of the Mills cabin, as the candle by which Mrs. Mills complained while she and Vashti sewed, could be faintly seen from Little Darby’s house. The two Mills boys slept stretched out on the one bed in the little centre-room.

While the women sewed and talked fitfully by the single tallow candle, and old Cove dozed in a chair with his long legs stretched out toward the fire and the two shining barrels of his sons’ muskets resting against his knees, where they had slipped from his hands when he had finished rubbing them.

The younger woman did most of the sewing. Her fingers were suppler than her mother’s, and she scarcely spoke except to answer the latter’s querulous questions. Presently a rooster crowed somewhere in the distance, and almost immediately another crowed in answer closer at hand.

“Thar’s the second rooster-crow, it’s gittin’ erlong toward the mornin’,” said the elder woman.

The young girl made no answer, but a moment later rose and, laying aside the thing she was sewing, walked to the low door and stepped out into the night. When she returned and picked up her sewing again, her mother said:

“I de-clar, Vashti, you drinks mo’ water than anybody I ever see.”

To which she made no answer.

“Air they a-stirrin’ over at Mis’s Stanley’s?” asked the mother.

“They ain’t a-been to bed,” said the girl, quietly; and then, as if a sudden thought had struck her, she hitched her chair nearer the door which she had left open, and sat facing it as she sewed on the brown thing she was working on a small bow which she took from her dress.

“I de-clar, I don’t see what old Mis’s Stanley is actually a-gwine to do,” broke out Mrs. Mills, suddenly, and when Vashti did not feel called on to try to enlighten her she added, “Do you?”

“Same as other folks, I s’pose,” said the girl, quietly.

“Other folks has somebody–somebody to take keer on ’em. I’ve got your pappy now; but she ain’t got nobody but little Darby–and when he’s gone what will she do?”

For answer Vashti only hitched her chair a little nearer the door and sewed on almost in darkness. “Not that he was much account to her, ner to anybody else, except for goin’ aroun’ a-fightin’ and a-fussin’.”

“He was account to her,” flamed up the girl, suddenly; “he was account to her, to her and to everybody else. He was the fust soldier that ‘listed, and he’s account to everybody.”

The old woman had raised her head in astonishment at her daughter’s first outbreak, and was evidently about to reply sharply; but the girl’s flushed face and flashing eyes awed and silenced her.

“Well, well, I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ against him,” she said, presently.

“Yes, you air–you’re always sayin’ somethin’ against him–and so is everybody else–and they ain’t fitten to tie his shoes. Why don’t they say it to his face! There ain’t one of ’em as dares it, and he’s the best soldier in the comp’ny, an’ I’m jest as proud of it as if he was my own.”