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No supper; no condolence; no viewing "the remains" not even a handshake! Maw didn't even look at her old friends, riding back home between Tom and Luke, with her head fiercely high in the air. A dull depression settled on Luke's heart. It was all up with the Hayneses now. They had saved Paw from charity with their home-made burial; but what had it availed?
Not that anyone in particular expected "them poor Hayneses" to keep bright or "chirk up." As far back as he could remember, Luke had realized that the hand of God was laid on his family. Dragging his bad leg up the hill pastures after the cow, day in and day out, he had evolved a sort of patient philosophy about it.
Something had fretted and eaten into her heart like an acid ever since Aunt Mollie's visit and the news of Matty Bisbee's funeral. When, one by one, the early summer festivities of the neighborhood had slipped by, with no inclusion of the Hayneses, she had fallen to brooding deeply, to feeling more bitterly than ever the ignominy and wretchedness of their position.
Maw had put a red geranium on the table; there was the crispy fragrance of frying salt pork and soda biscuit in the air. These the Hayneses! These people, with hope and self-esteem once more in their hearts! These people, with a new, a unique place in the community's respect! It was all like a beautiful miracle; and, thinking of its maker, Luke choked suddenly and gulped.
Briefly, as her sister told it, Virginia was engaged to Hampton Haynes, a young medical student at the college where his father was a professor of diseases of the heart. The Hayneses were of a fine Southern family which had never recovered from the war and had finally come to New York. The father, Dr.
Never could see one 'thout the other when we was growin' up Jim Bisbee knew that too! But" her voice wavered miserably "I didn't get no invite to her funeral. I don't count no more, Lukey. None of us, anywheres.... We're jest them poor Gawd-forsaken Hayneses." She slipped down suddenly into a chair and covered her face, her thin shoulders shaking. Luke went and touched her awkwardly.
It was just inevitable, like a lot of things known in that rock-ribbed and fatalistic region as immutably decreed by heaven as foreordination and the damnation of unbaptized babes. The Hayneses had just "got it hard." Yet there were times, now he was come to a gangling fourteen, when Luke's philosophy threatened to fail him. It wasn't fair so it wasn't!
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