Dixie Hart | Page 6

article that she didn't have ready, in some
shape or other. But after 'while hot things quit comin' and cold uns
appeared that had a familiar look, and now me and you and all of us set
down to the same old seven and six. Well, my jaw teeth ain't as good as
they used to be, and I make out by soakin' my bread-crust in my coffee.
Hettie says she's goin' to have me an' Jane both fitted out with store sets.
Folks that have tried 'em say they beat the old sort all holler--that you
kin crack hickory-nuts if you have both upper and lower and git a fair
clamp on 'em and use yore muscles."
Henley turned into the big dining-room, where his "stepmother-in-law,"
a diminutive woman, sat at the foot of the oblong table dressed in faded
black, even to the poke sunbonnet which, worn indoors and out,
completely hid her wrinkled face. Mrs. Henley, as he seated himself on
the side of the board opposite Wrinkle, came from the adjoining
kitchen carrying a steaming pot of coffee, which she put by her plate at
the head of the table, and sat down stiffly. The smooth floor of the
room was bare save for a few rugs made of varicolored rags. The walls
had a few cheap pictures on them--brilliant old-fashioned prints in

mahogany frames, and some enlarged photographs in tawdry gilt. The
wide hearth of a deep chimney was whitewashed, as was also the
exposed brickwork up to a crude mantelpiece on which towered a
Colonial clock with wooden wheels, ornamental dial, ponderous
weights, and a painted glass door.
Mrs. Henley had not always been so unattractive; her dark eyes were
good and her face held the glow of fine health. She had added to the
severity of her sharp features by the too-elderly manner in which she
parted her hair exactly in the centre of her high brow and brushed it
sharply backward to a scant knot behind. She wore constantly an
expression of one who was well aware of the fact that vast and vague
duties to the dead as well as to the living rested on her and which
should be performed at any cost. She was not usually talkative, and she
had few observations to make this morning. As she nibbled the hot
biscuit, upon which she had daintily spread a bit of butter, she allowed
her glance to rove perfunctorily over the three plates beyond her own.
She asked Wrinkle if his coffee was strong enough, and the gap in the
black bonnet if the mush was too lumpy. From the bonnet came a
mumbling content with the yellow mass into which cream was being
slowly stirred with a quivering hand. Wrinkle seemed more ready in the
use of his tongue.
"I hain't got no complaint to make," he said. "Especially sence Alf said
t'other day at the store that coffee was on the rise. I was curious to see
how this batch would sample out. I reckon when the market takes a
jump storekeepers has to take a lower grade to keep customers satisfied
with the price. But it won't work ef they are as good a judge of the stuff
as I am. I parched this lot myself and picked out heaps o' rotten grains."
"They wasn't rotten," Henley explained, authoritatively. "They was
water-stained by a wet crop-year, that's all. You was throwing away
good coffee."
"Good or not, the chickens wouldn't eat it," argued the tangled head. "I
know, fer I watched 'em. They was hangin' round the kitchen-door and
would run every time I throwed out a handful, but they didn't swallow
'em any more'n they would so many buckshot. But prices nor nothin'

else will ever git right, if I am any judge, till we git free silver. I tell
you, Alf, that man Bryant is the biggest gun, by all odds, that ever
belched fire in the defence of a helpless nation, and when them dratted
Yankees tricked 'im out of the Presidency they put the ball an' chain o'
slavery on every citizen of this fair land. Bryant told 'em that sixteen to
one would do the work, and what did they say? Huh, they said he was a
fool and didn't know how to figure. I tell you if he was a fool, Solomon
was a idiot. Who was the'r brag man up in Yankeedom?--why, Abe
Lincoln--an' what did he ever do but set back in the White House and
tell smutty jokes, while the rest o' the country was walkin' on its uppers,
eatin' hardtack, sweatin' blood, an' spittin' out minnie-balls. That
man"--Wrinkle swallowed as he pointed the prongs of his fork at the
crayon portrait of Henley's predecessor, which, with shaggy mustache