Tess of the Storm Country | Page 4

She loved every crawling, hateful thing, such as all honest people
despised, and she once fought with the son of an uphill farmer for
robbing a bird's nest, making him give up the eggs and restoring them
herself to the top of a pine tree in the fodder lot of Minister Graves.
According to the ideas of all who knew her, save her father and Myra
Longman, Tessibel was full of eccentric traits; for who but Tess would
feel the "mollygrubs," as Ben Letts had said, at the wriggling of the
agonized perch and pickerel, as they flopped painfully upon the sands;
or who but Tess would mind the squeaking of the mother-bird calling
for her own. It was something of this "mollygrub" feeling that hastened
her dirt-caked feet, as she rounded the mud cellar near her father's hut,
and sped back of the weeping willow tree hanging in green fringes over
the cabin. She dropped quickly upon her knees before a large log,
which in some former time the flood-waters had dashed to its place.
Tessibel ran her red, bare arm into the hole in the end of the log. Then
she sat up and gazed around.
"He air gone," she said aloud, "he air gone. Ben Letts has took him,
damn his dirty hide. He ain't no more good than--"
Something caused her to close her lips. A large high-warted toad

sprang into her dirty lap and slipped to the ground through the rent in
her skirt. Tenderly she took the reptile in her fingers, for she loved this
warted monster who seemed by the turn of his head to reciprocate in
some way the devotion the girl showered upon him. She lifted him
close to her face, and intently searched his poppy eyes.
"I said, damn his hide, Frederick," she said in a low tone, "'cause I
thought he took ye. And ye ain't done nothin' to him, have ye? Ye was
just out huntin' flies, wasn't ye, Frederick? Don't never stay long or ye'll
git hit with a spear. Ezry Longman don't like ye nuther, 'cause I kisses
ye, and 'cause, on my birthday, I hit his mug with a dishrag when he
was tryin' to kiss me fifteen times, and was askin' me to marry him. I'd
rather kiss--"
Her sentence remained unfinished. She looked up to see a tall boy
leaning upon a rake, a boy with pale gray eyes, and an evil face. His
short hair looked as if it had passed through the fingers of a prison
barber. His blue-jean breeches were held up by a rope fastened in the
button holes with small iron nails, and the blue blouse which had been
clean that morning was now drenched with perspiration.
"Ain't ye got nothin' better to do than to be kissin' a toad," he
expostulated, without waiting for the girl to greet him, although she had
risen to her feet, holding fast to her reptile treasure.
"Ain't nothin' to you, air it, what I does as long as Daddy don't care?"
she retorted, and sullenly counted one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight long weeping willow leaves which had died that day and had
fallen to the ground. She gathered each leaf between her great bare toe
and its next-door neighbor, deftly throwing them aside as she counted.
"I care," stolidly said the boy coming nearer, "and ye air a goin' to
throw that toad away, does ye see? Ma says as how ye could be made
into a woman if ye hadn't got batty with birds and things. She says as
how when ye sing to the brat that yer voice sounds like an angel's, and
that's why the kid sleeps. He air a cryin' all the time to have ye sing to
him."

Tess hadn't expected this. She did love the tiny unwelcome child of
Myra Longman, a child without a father, or a place in the world. Tess
loved the babe because there was an expression in its eyes that she had
once seen in a wounded baby bird's ... a pitiful unborn expression
which would go with the brat to its grave.
She stooped down and placed the toad again in his hole, shoving him
deep down into his cavity, for the sun was going down and Frederick
would sleep as long as there were no flies about.
The boy spoke again.
"Mammy says as how if ye don't stop runnin' wild ye'll be worse than
Myry with another--"
Suddenly the clenched fist of the girl flew up and struck the fisherman
with a swiftness and force that took him from his feet. Tessibel was
standing over him rigidly.
"I hates ye, I hates ye, I'd ruther marry--yep, I'd ruther marry my toad
or a man as ugly