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Updated: June 12, 2025
At the moment, however, his one desire was to avoid the long drive with her behind the ancient sorrel who never went out of a walk. Zeena made no reply: she did not seem to hear what he had said. She had already pushed her plate aside, and was measuring out a draught from a large bottle at her elbow.
He had now no doubt that Zeena had spoken the truth in saying, the night before, that she had sat up because she felt "too mean" to sleep: her abrupt resolve to seek medical advice showed that, as usual, she was wholly absorbed in her health.
Zeena always came back laden with expensive remedies, and her last visit to Springfield had been commemorated by her paying twenty dollars for an electric battery of which she had never been able to learn the use. But for the moment his sense of relief was so great as to preclude all other feelings.
Zeena had always been what Starkfield called "sickly," and Frome had to admit that, if she were as ailing as she believed, she needed the help of a stronger arm than the one which lay so lightly in his during the night walks to the farm. Mattie had no natural turn for housekeeping, and her training had done nothing to remedy the defect.
Mattie lifted her hand with a quick gesture, and he heard his wife's step behind him. Zeena came into the room with her dragging down-at-the-heel step, and quietly took her accustomed seat between them. "I felt a little mite better, and Dr.
"You wanted to make the supper-table pretty; and you waited till my back was turned, and took the thing I set most store by of anything I've got, and wouldn't never use it, not even when the minister come to dinner, or Aunt Martha Pierce come over from Bettsbridge " Zeena paused with a gasp, as if terrified by her own evocation of the sacrilege.
Zeena, after feeding the cat, had returned to her rocking-chair by the stove, and Jotham Powell, who always lingered last, reluctantly pushed back his chair and moved toward the door. On the threshold he turned back to say to Ethan: "What time'll I come round for Mattie?" Ethan was standing near the window, mechanically filling his pipe while he watched Mattie move to and fro.
Zeena did not move or look up when he entered, and after a moment he asked: "Where's Mattie?" Without lifting her eyes from the page she replied: "I presume she's getting down her trunk." The blood rushed to his face. "Getting down her trunk alone?" "Jotham Powell's down in the wood-lot, and Dan'l Byrne says he darsn't leave that horse," she returned.
He even crept down on Saturday nights to scrub the kitchen floor after the women had gone to bed; and Zeena, one day, had surprised him at the churn and had turned away silently, with one of her queer looks. Of late there had been other signs of her disfavour, as intangible but more disquieting.
"That girl that's coming told me she was used to a house where they had a furnace," Zeena persisted with the same monotonous mildness. "She'd better ha' stayed there then," he flung back at her; and turning to Mattie he added in a hard voice: "You be ready by three, Matt; I've got business at Corbury." Jotham Powell had started for the barn, and Ethan strode down after him aflame with anger.
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