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Updated: May 6, 2025
"Marthy's doin's," Bradley explained, sheepishly; "don't hold me accountable; she's arranged to give you a shindig to introduce you to the young folks round about." Just then Mrs. Bradley came in. "Sweep the hearth, Alf," she said, pointing to a live coal that had popped out on the floor. "Didn't I tell you never to put on them chestnut logs? Do you want to burn the roof over our heads?
I never yet lived in a cow-country where there wasn't more or less talk of rustling. You don't want to take gossip like that too seriously. Anything more?" Billy Louise glanced at him surreptitiously and looked away again. Then she tried to go on as casually as she had begun. "Well, there's something about the Cove. I don't believe Marthy's happy.
Billy Louise was talking aimlessly to keep her thoughts away from the pitifulness of the sordid little tragedy in this beauty-spot and to drive that blank, apathetic look from Marthy's hard eyes. "Charlie Fox, his name is. I hope he turns out a good worker. I've never had a chance to git ahead any; but if Charlie'll jest take holt, I'll mebby git some comfort outa life yit."
"All Marthy's fault, hain't it? Kind of a mean disposition, hain't she?" "No sich thing, Scattergood, and you know it dum well. There didn't use to be a sweeter-dispositioned girl in the state than Marthy.... Somethin's jest went wrong. They's times when I git mad and it all looks to be her fault, and then I ketch my own self startin' some hectorin' meanness.
I gethered a bunch o' honeysuckles to put on Marthy's table, and when I got back, Marthy and the baby was both asleep, and Amos looked as if he was beginnin' to have some little hopes of the child's salvation. "Marthy named him John; and Sam Amos said he reckoned it was for John the Babtist. But it wasn't; it was for Marthy's twin brother that died when he was jest three months old.
Her lips sagged with the pull of her aching heart. For the third time in her life Billy Louise saw big, slow tears gather in Marthy's hard blue eyes and slide down the leathery seams in her cheeks. Billy Louise looked, found her vision blurring with her own tears, and turned and tiptoed from the room. Seabeck was gone somewhere on his horse.
For months she had known that the engagement must be broken sooner or later; and she knew now, while she listened to Marthy's shuffling feet hastening to deliver her message, that she must break it to-night.
After a somewhat protracted silence, Marthy's gentle voice resumed: "And from that day to this John and me hain't left her sence. We shet up our house and moved down to hern; and she tuck to setting by the fire or out on the porch, allus a-knitting, and seldom speaking a word in all them years about Evy or her sorrow or her curse.
He scratched his head perplexedly as he stepped back from the wheel. "Hey, wait!" he addressed the doctor as he started a second time. He fumbled in an inner pocket of his rough coat. "I was forgetting, Miss Felicia, a matter of a letter for you I found in Marthy's things she sent it off at you this long time ago but it came back at her "
The dishpan was even more unpleasant than experience had foretold for her; and of Marthy's somewhat meager supply there seemed not one clean dish in the house. The sympathy of Billy Louise therefore waned rapidly; rather, it turned in upon itself.
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