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The boy saw that Hunter Kinemon couldn't support labor that only two or three years before he would have finished without conscious effort. David resolutely ignored this; he felt that it must be a cause of shame, unhappiness, to his father; and he never mentioned it to Allen.
Simmons' brother went and asked them what was it about; and one of the Hatburns that's their name said he'd busted the loony just because!" "What did Simmons answer back?" Hunter Kinemon demanded, his coffee cup suspended. "Nothing much; he'd law them, or something like that. The Simmonses are right spindling; they don't belong in Greenstream either."
Kinemon lay very still on the couch; his pipe, beside him on the floor, had spilled its live core, burning into a length of rag carpet. His face, hung with shadows like the marks of a sooty finger, was glistening with fine sweat. Not a whisper of complaint passed his dry lips. When his wife approached he attempted to smooth out his corrugated countenance.
"Boy," he demanded, "did you kick in my front door?" "I'm the Government's agent," David replied. "I've got to have the mail. I'm David Kinemon too; and I wouldn't step round to your back door, Hatburn not if there was a boiling of you!" "You'll learn you this," one of the others broke in: "it will be the sweetest breath you ever draw'd when you get out that back door!"
This had not changed his aspect of blossoming youth, the intense blue candor of his gaze; he sat with his knees bent boyishly, his immature hands locked behind his head. An open wagon, piled with blankets, carried Allen to Crabapple, and Mrs. Kinemon and David followed in the buggy, a great bundle, folded in the bright quilt, roped behind.
"Any women'll get to the church," Mr. Kinemon asserted. "I wonder? Did a person say who were they?" "I asked; but they're strange to Crabapple. I heard this though: there weren't any women to them just men father and sons like. I drew up right slow going by; but nobody passed out a word. It's a middling bad farm place rocks and berry bushes. I wouldn't reckon much would be content there."
Allen's face was like white paper; suddenly it had grown as thin and sharp as an old man's. Only a slight quiver of his eyelids showed that he was not dead. Hunter Kinemon sat on the couch, obviously waiting for the doctor. He, too, looked queer, David thought.
"You couldn't hold the job permanent yet, but I might let you drive extra a day or so till we find a man. I'd like to do what I could for Mrs. Kinemon. Your father was a good man, a good customer.... Come and see me again say, day after to-morrow." This half promise partly rehabilitated his fallen pride.
A great deal of this certainly was due to his mother, a thick solid woman, who retained more than a trace of girlish beauty when she stood back, flushed from the heat of cooking, or, her bright eyes snapping, tramped with heavy pails from the milking shed on a winter morning. Both the Kinemon boys were engaging.
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