Jerome, A Poor Man | Page 4

would begin to take on curves and the hungry look would
disappear from his face. He was a handsome boy, with a fearless
outlook of black eyes from his lean, delicate face, and a thick curling
crop of fair hair which the sun had bleached like straw. Always
protected from the weather, Jerome's hair would have been brown; but
his hats failed him like his shoes, and often in the summer season were
crownless. However, his mother mended them as long as she was able.
She was a thrifty woman, although she was a semi-invalid, and sat all
day long in a high-backed rocking-chair. She was not young either; she
had been old when she married and her children were born, but there
was a strange element of toughness in her--a fibre either of body or
spirit that kept her in being, like the fibre of an old tree.
Before Jerome entered the house his mother's voice saluted him.
"Where have you been, Jerome Edwards?" she demanded. Her voice
was querulous, but strongly shrill. It could penetrate every wall and
door. Ann Edwards, as she sat in her rocking-chair, lifted up her voice,
and it sounded all over her house like a trumpet, and all her household
marched to it.

"Been over in the pasture," answered Jerome, with quick and yet rather
defiant obedience, as he opened the door.
His mother's face, curiously triangular in outline, like a cat's, with great
hollow black eyes between thin parted curtains of black false hair,
confronted him when he entered the room. She always sat face to the
door and window, and not a soul who passed or entered escaped her for
a minute. "What have you been doing in the pasture?" said she.
"Sittin'."
"Sittin'?"
"I've been sitting on the warm side of the big rock a little while," said
Jerome. He looked subdued before his mother's gaze, and yet not
abashed. She always felt sure that there was some hidden reserve of
rebellion in Jerome, coerce him into obedience as she might. She never
really governed him, as she did her daughter Elmira, who stood
washing dishes at the sink. But she loved Jerome better, although she
tried not to, and would not own it to herself.
"Do you know what time it is?" said she, severely.
Jerome glanced at the tall clock in the corner. It was nearly ten. He
glanced and made no reply. He sometimes had a dignified masculine
way, beyond his years, of eschewing all unnecessary words. His mother
saw him look at the time; why should he speak? She did not wait for
him. "'Most ten o'clock," said she, "and a great boy twelve years old
lazing round on a rock in a pasture when all his folks are working.
Here's your mother, feeble as she is, workin' her fingers to the bone,
while you're doing nothing a whole forenoon. I should think you'd be
ashamed of yourself. Now you take the spade and go right out and go
to work in the garden. It's time them beans are in, if they're going to be.
Your father has had to go down to the wood-lot and get a load of wood
for Doctor Prescott, and here 'tis May and the garden not planted. Go
right along." All the time Jerome's mother talked, her little lean strong
fingers flew, twirling bright colored rags in and out. She was braiding a
rug for this same Doctor Prescott's wife. The bright strips spread and

twirled over her like snakes, and the balls wherein the rags were wound
rolled about the floor. Most women kept their rag balls in a basket
when they braided, but Ann Edwards worked always in a sort of untidy
fury.
Jerome went out, little hungry boy with the winter chill again creeping
through his veins, got the spade out of the barn, and set to work in the
garden. The garden lay on the sunny slope of a hill which rose directly
behind the house; when his spade struck a stone Jerome would send it
rolling out of his way to the foot of the hill. He got considerable
amusement from that, and presently the work warmed him.
The robins were singing all about. Every now and then one flew out of
the sweet spring distance, lit, and silently erected his red breast among
some plough ridges lower down. It was like a veritable transition from
sound to sight.
Below where Jerome spaded, and upon the left, stretched long waving
plough ridges where the corn was planted. Jerome's father had been at
work there with the old white horse that was drawing wood for him
to-day. Much of the garden had to be spaded instead of ploughed,
because this same old white horse was needed for other