The Black Creek Stopping-House | Page 9

a typical pioneer group-- homesteaders, speculators, machine men journeying through the country to sell machinery to harvest the grain not yet grown; the farmer has ever been well endowed with hope, and the machine business flourishes.
Mrs. Corbett could talk and work at the same time, her sudden disappearances from the room as she replenished the table merely serving as punctuation marks, and not interfering with the thread of the story at all.
When she was compelled by the exigencies of the case to be present in the kitchen, and therefore absent in the dining-room, she merely elevated her voice to overcome distance, and dropped no stitch in the conversation.
"New neighbor, is it, you are sayin', Tom? 'Deed and I have, and her the purtiest little trick you ever saw--diamond rings on her, and silk skirts, and plumes on her hat, and hair as yalla as gold."
"When she comes over here I can't be doin' my work for lookin' at her. She was brought up with slathers of money." This came back from the "cheek of the dure", where Mrs. Corbett was emptying the tea leaves from the teapot. "But the old man, beyant, ain't been pleased with her since she married this Fred chap--he wouldn't ever look at Fred, nor let him come to the house, and so she ran away with him, and no one could blame her either for that, and now her and the old man don't write at all, at all--reach me the bread plate in front of you there, Jim--and there's bad blood between them. I can see, though, her and the old man are fond o' one another!"
"Is her man anything like the twin pirates?" asked Sam Moggey from Oak Creek; "because if he is I don't blame the old man for being mad about it." Sam was helping himself to another quarter of vinegar pie as he spoke.
Mrs. Corbett could not reply for a minute, for she was putting a new bandage on Jimmy MacCaulay's finger, and she had the needle and thread in her mouth.
"Not a bit like them, Sam," she said, as soon as she had the bandage in place, and as she put in quick stitches; "no more like them than day is like night--he's only a half-brother, and a lot younger. He's a different sort altogether from them two murderin' villains that sits in the house all day playin' cards. He's a good, smart fellow, and has done a lot of breakin' and cleanin' up since he came. What he thinks of the other two lads I don't know--she never says, but I'd like fine to know."
"Sure, you'll soon know then, Maggie," said "Da" Corbett, bringing in another platter of bacon and eggs and refilling the men's plates. "Don't worry."
In the laugh that followed Maggie Corbett joined as heartily as any of them.
"Go 'long with you, Da!" she cried; "sure you're just as anxious as I am to know. We all think a lot of Fred and Mrs. Fred," she went on, bringing in two big dishes of potatoes; "and if you could see that poor, precious lamb trying to cook pork and beans with a little wisp of an apron on, all lace and ribbons, and big diamonds on her fingers, you'd be sorry for her, and you'd say, 'What kind of an old tyrant is the old man down beyant, and why don't he take her and Fred back?' It's not wrastlin' round black pots she should be, and she's never been any place all summer only over here, for they've only the oxen, and altho' she never says anything, I'll bet you she'd like a bit of a drive, or to get out to some kind of a-doin's, or the like of that."
While Mrs. Corbett gaily rattled on there was one man at her table who apparently took no notice of what she said.
He was a different type of man from all the others. Dark complexioned, with swarthy skin and compelling black eyes, he would be noticeable in any company. He was dressed in the well-cut clothes of a city man, and carried himself with a certain air of distinction.
Happening to notice the expression on his face, Mrs. Corbett suddenly changed the conversation, and during the remainder of the meal watched him closely with a puzzled and distrustful look.
When the men had gone that day and John Corbett came in to have his afternoon rest on the lounge in the kitchen, he found Maggie in a self- reproachful mood.
"Da," she began, "the devil must have had a fine laugh to himself when he saw the Lord puttin' a tongue in a woman's head. Did ye hear me to-day, talking along about that purty young thing beyant, and Rance Belmont takin' in every word of it? Sure and