"You're right, Uncle Tucker; it's all wonderful.I never saw such a sunset in my life.""Ah, but you haven't seen it yet," said Tucker."I've been looking at it since it first caught that pile of clouds, and it grows more splendid every instant.I'm not an overreligious body, I reckon, and I've always held that the best compliment you can pay God Almighty is to let Him go His own gait and quit advising Him; but, I declare, as I sat here just now I couldn't help being impertinent enough to pray that I might live to see another.""Well, it's a first-rate one; that's so.It seems to shake a body out of the muck, somehow.""I shouldn't wonder if it did; and that's what I told two young fools who were up here just now asking me to patch up their first married quarrel.'For heaven's sake, stop playing with mud and sit down and watch that sunset,' I said to 'em, and if you'll believe it, the girl actually dropped her jaws and replied she had to hurry back to shell her beans while the light lasted.
Beans! Why, they'll make beans enough of their marriage, and so Itold 'em."
Tapping his crutch gently on the ground, he paused and sat smiling broadly at the sunset.
For a time Christopher watched with him while the gold-and-crimson glory flamed beyond the twisted boughs of the old pine; then, turning his troubled face on Tucker's cheerful one, he asked deliberately:
"Do you sometimes regret that you never married, Uncle Tucker?""Regret?" repeated Tucker softly."Why, no.I haven't time for it--there's too much else to think about.Regret is a dangerous thing, my boy; you let a little one no bigger than a mustard seed into your heart, and before you know it you've hatched out a whole brood.Why, if I began to regret that, heaven knows where Ishould stop.I'd regret my leg and arm next, the pictures I might have painted, and the four years' war which we might have won.
No, no.I'd change nothing, I tell you--not a day; not an hour;not a single sin nor a single virtue.They're all woven into the pattern of the whole, and I reckon the Lord knew the figure He had in mind.""Well, I'd like to pull a thread or two out of it," returned Christopher moodily, squinting his eyes at the approaching form of Susan Spade, who came from the afterglow through the whitewashed gate."Why, what's bringing her, I wonder?" he asked with evident displeasure.
To this inquiry Susan herself presently made answer as she walked with her determined tread across the little yard.
"I've a bit of news for you, Mr.Christopher, an' I reckon you'd ruther have it from my mouth than from Bill Fletcher's.His back's up agin, the Lord knows why, an' he's gone an' moved his pasture fence so as to take in yo' old field that lies beside it.
He swars it's his, too, but Tom's ready to match him with a bigger oath that it's yours an' always has been.""Of course it's mine," said Christopher coolly."The meadow brook marks the boundary, and the field is on this side.I can prove it by Tom or Jacob Weatherby tomorrow.""Well, he's took it " rejoined Mrs.Spade flatly.
"He won't keep it long, I reckon, ma'am," said Tucker, in his pleasant manner; "and I must say it seems to me that Bill Fletcher is straining at a gnat.Why, he has near two thousand acres, hasn't he? And what under heaven does he want with that old field the sheep have nibbled bare? There's no sense in it.""It ain't sense, it's nature," returned Mrs.Spade, sitting squarely down on the bench from which Christopher had risen; "an'
that's what I've had ag'in men folks from the start--thar's too much natur in 'em.You kin skeer it out of a woman, an' you kin beat it out of a dog, an' thar're times when you kin even spank it out of a baby, but if you oust it from a man thar ain't nothin' but skin an' bones left behind.An' natur's a ticklish thing to handle without gloves, bless yo' soul, suh.It's like a hive of bees: you give it a little poke to start it, an' the first thing you know it's swarmin' all over both yo' hands.It's a skeery thing, suh, an' Bill Fletcher's got his share of it, sho's you're born.""It has its way with him pretty thoroughly, I think," responded Tucker, chuckling; "but if I were you, Christopher, I'd stick up for my rights in that old field.Bill Fletcher may need exercise, but there's no reason he should get it by trampling over you.""Oh, I'll throw his fence down, never fear," answered Christopher indifferently."He knew it, I dare say, when he put it up.""It's a fuss he wants, suh, an' nothing else," declared Mrs.
Spade, smoothing down the starched fold of her gingham apron;"an' if he doesn't git it, po' creetur, he's goin' to be laid up in bed befo' the week is out.He's bilin' hot inside, I can see that in his face, an' if the steam don't work out one way it will another.When a man ain't got a wife or child to nag at he's mighty sho' to turn right round an' begin naggin' at his neighbours, an' that's why it's the bounden duty of every decent woman to marry an' save the peace.Why, if Tom hadn't had me to worry on, I reckon he'd be the biggest blusterer in this county or the next."Leaving her still talking, Christopher went from her into the house, where he lingered an instant with drawn breath before his mother's door.The old lady was sleeping tranquilly, and, treading softly in his heavy boots, he passed out to the friendly faces of the horses and the cool dusk of the stable.
As the days went on, drawing gradually toward summer, Mrs.
Blake's life began peacefully to flicker out, like a candle that has burned into the socket.There were hours when her mind was quite clear, and at such times she would talk unceasingly in her old sprightly fashion, with her animated gestures and her arch and fascinating smile.But following these sanguine periods there would come whole days when she lay unconscious and barely taking breath, while her features grew sharp and wan under the pallid skin.
