The Rebellion of Mrs. McLelland

By the 1890s, the demise of the genteel Victorian woman began, accelerated by women's increasing impact in politics, medicine, and business, by a liberation in language and literature, and by an emphasis on physical culture, spawned by the popularity of the bicycle and the new freedoms and dress reforms it in turn created. Although Mrs. McLelland, a well-drawn and recurring character in Cleary's fiction, would never consider herself a "New Woman," a subject avidly discussed in the late nineteenth century, her rebellion from her submissive role would certainly be cause for Mr. McLelland to consider her a part of the also much-debated "Woman Problem." Cleary employs humor to soften the conflict with established norms that her ideas on women's unequal status and need for empowerment might provoke. The irony of the physically strong Maria bending to the will of her frail husband further serves as a comic device for Cleary's social criticism.

"I got four years' wear out'n it," explained Mrs. McLelland. "It's been turned twice, an' the moths have got into it some. I b'lieve it had better go into the carpet, Mis' Har'rot."

She laid down her shears and doubtfully surveyed the faded garment on her knee. Mrs. Harriot, a bent, slender, toothless old woman, with a peaked chin and pointed nose, put her sleek gray head on one side, and discriminatingly scrutinized the skirt under discussion.

"I don't expect you could get the hull of another winter out'n it, Mis' McLelland, though I do say it seems a shame to cut up wool goods, even when it is clean wore out. Seems like it could be made to do for linin' somethin'."

"Linin' costs as much as goods, Mis' Har'rot. You remember the dress I got last winter--the one that looked like a flannel, but of course, 't wasn't, only cotton. It cost 10 cents a yard in Bubble. When Mis' Chastina Gibbs come here to cut it out she allowed it ought to be lined. I ast pa about it, but pa he said as how he didn't see no sense in slappin' one gownd on top of another, so to speak. 'Linin's only six cents a yard,' says I, 'an' I won't want but ten or twelve yards. But pa--"

She sighed, and lapsed into mournful silence. There was no sound save the slashing of her shears along the checked print on her lap, an old shirt of her husband. She removed the sleeve with a deftness suggestive of amputation and surgical skill. Mrs.. Harriot sighed, too. She hitched her chair nearer to that of her hostess, and sniffed sympathetically.

"He's close, ain't he?" she ventured.

"Close!" Mrs. McLelland's grim brow wrinkled over her glasses. "He's closer'n bees-a-swarmin', an' them's the closest thing I know."

"But you did git the linin', Mis' McLelland. Leastways, Chastina give out she'd cut a lined dress for you."

Mrs. McLelland laid down the shirt with the neckband half cut off. She rose with an effort. She strode across the farmhouse kitchen. She lifted the lid of a little old horsehair trunk that stood under a deal shelf in the corner. From this she took a shapeless mass of material. This material was of a sage green, arabesqued by a vine of brilliant orange. She carried the garment over to Mrs. Harriot.

"This here's the dress, Mis' Har'rot," she said, "an' this here's the linin'."

She turned the garment inside out. The lining was of coarse muslin of a pale biscuit color. It was stamped and penciled with blue markings. These, however, had been partially obliterated. Mrs. Harriot, however, managed to make out: "--ller--M--ls--est--n--t--r----eat."

"For the land's sake, Mis' McLelland! I never see no dress linin' like that."

Mrs. McLelland compressed her lips. She whisked the gown into shape, folded it, straightened its bulkiness into comparative symmetry with divers tugs and pats, and restored it to its place in the horsehair trunk. It was not until she was again seated and snipping savagely at the collar of Mr. McLelland's discarded shirt that her neighbor's patience was rewarded.

"No more did any one else, Mis' Har'rot. That linin's flour sacks. I saved 'em. I washed 'em, an' bleached 'em, an biled 'em, an' ironed 'em. It seemed like I couldn't git the letters out, though I used most enough lye to scald every bit o' skin off'n a body's hands. There was 'Bubble Roller Mills Best Winter Wheat' on every one."

"Seems like that's a lot of work when new linin' is only six cents a yard," put in Mrs. Harriot. "Mr. McLelland that rich, too!"

Mrs. McLelland's face softened.

"We ain't on the road to the poorhouse, I'll admit. We got this farm, an' one in Illinois, an' a half section over in Thayer County, an' 6,000 bushel of cribbed corn, not to talk of the cattle an' the hogs--" She broke off, smiling complacently.

"Then there's the farm you give Tommy, Mrs. McLelland. I'm sure you've treated him like he was your own son."

Instantly the old face was grim and wrathful again.

"Didn't I? An' see all that pa ever done for my daughter! It's fifteen year since I seen her even. Her little girl weren't but 3 three years old then. An' I've been beg--who's that?"

She had lowered her head and was peering over her spectacles through the one little window down the yellow strip of wagon way which stretched across the prairie to the road. "That" was a masculine figure which had dropped from a white horse and was shambling toward the farmhouse. He was an ill-hung youth, who had run to legs and arms in a manner quite disproportionate to his body. His denim overalls were too short by five inches. A tattered straw hat which had endured the successive suns of three Western summers surmounted his brick-red head.

"Ain't it Plunkett's Joe?" queried Mrs. Harriot.

She had risen, a reel of cut rags over her left arm, and was peering over the shoulders of her portly hostess,

"It's him. I can see his red face now. What's bringin' him here?"

"He's got a letter in his hand."

"He ain't never brung our mail. Besides, it come yistiday. It--it--" the shears clattered down on the floor. She leaned forward, shaking, breathless. "Look you, Mis' Har'rot! The--the envelope--it's yaller. Isn't it yaller, Mis' Har'rot? Isn't it--let me go--he's nigh the door now--isn't it a--a telegram?"

It was a telegram. The rose colored youth offered it to her with a word of explanation. The agent had asked him--he'd been in town to get spavin cure for the bay mare--if he'd bring out the message, seein' he'd be passin' the McLelland farm on his way home. He'd said he would, and here it was.

Now the bulk of Mrs. McLelland was that of three ordinary women. The mind of Mrs. McLelland was a marvel of piercing penetration and crystalline comprehension. And the nerve of Mrs. McLelland was a thing before which tramps fled, cattle were conquered, and the sacerdotal mountebanks who scoured the prairies retreated humiliated and aghast.

But Mrs. McLelland could no more have put out her hand and taken that telegram from the rose colored boy on the threshold of her home than she could have asked her spouse for a dollar to spend precisely as she pleased.

"What's in it?" she gasped.

She tore her cotton gown loose at the throat and stood leaning against the door.

The rose colored boy grinned.

"I dunno," he answered.

Little Mrs. Harriot pushed forward.

"Set down, do, Mrs. McLelland. I'll break it to you. Likes as not it's business. Once my husband got a telegraph an' 'twas only about the price of corn. You give it to me--you're Plunkett's Joe, ain't you?"

Ya-as," returned the rose colored boy, doubtfully. "But this here's for Mrs. Mc., you see. Here, Mrs.. Mc."

He thrust the yellow envelope into her hand, turned on his heel, and disappeared in the swirling dust of the June afternoon.

Mrs. McLelland attempted to open the envelope. Her fingers shook. Mrs. Harriot snipped off the end of the envelope with the shears. She pulled Mrs. McLelland's spectacles from her forehead to her nose.

"There, now!" she said.

In the burning hush of the midsummer noon the two women stood in the doorway and Mrs. McLelland picked out the words one by one.

"My Maria is sick. Can't you come, ma? Your daughter,

ELIZA LOUISE."

Mrs. McLelland sank down trembling.

"There! It's just as I was beginnin' to tell you when he come, Mis' Har'rot. I've been beggin' an' beggin' these years back to see Eliza Louise. Her little girl has growed up an' got married since I seen either one of 'em. Pa, he'd allus put me off. One year it 'ud be the drought. The next year it 'ud be the grasshoppers. The year after there was something to be done for Tommy--his boy, you know. There was Tommy's schoolin', and Tommy's courtin', an' Tommy's farmin', an''Tommy's marryin', an' the mortgidge on the new farm, an' so between it all I never got to go. Fifteen year--an' now her little girl's like to die, no doubt--she was married a year ago, Mis' Har'rot--an' I'll never set eyes on them again!"

She fell to sobbing. The sound was horribly harsh on the hot silence. The powerful frame was quivering. The old gray head was bent.

"Don't take on--now, don't!" Mrs. Harriot entreated. "I knowed a woman once that the doctors give up, an' she lived to be a hundred an' five. Leastways she said she was a hundred an' five when she died, and that once the doctors had giv her up. She'll git better--your granddaughter will."

"But I want to see them--my own Eliza Louise an' her sick girl."

Mrs. Harriot thought of the three farms beside the one which had been given to Tommy. She thought of the fat cattle, the two hundred hogs, the six thousand bushels of cribbed corn, and her bent old back straightened.

"Why don't you go an' see 'em?" she demanded.

The strangling sobs ceased. Mrs. McLelland lifted a tear-blotched face.

"If I was to ask pa for the money to go he'd have a duck fit."

"Let him!" decided Mrs.Harriot.

Somewhere back of her bowed old body, somewhere back of her shrunken frame, must have been a dash of warlike blood, a fine streak of defiance. A look of awe came into the face of Mrs. McLelland.

"What do you mean?" she asked in a strained voice. "Do you mean I ought to--ought to stand up again pa?"

There was a hush in the world just then--their world. The oceans of corn which hid the little farmhouse in the hollow from sight were stirless in the steeping sunshine. Not a cloud moved overhead; not a bird wing cleaved the blue air.

"Yes," returned Mrs. Harriot, "that's what I mean."

Again there was silence. The tempter sat breathlessly eyeing the tempted. The attenuated little creature regarded the majestic matron opposite her much as a tiny spider might regard an enmeshed and struggling blue-bottle fly.

"Stand up--again pa!" whispered Mrs. McLelland at length. "O, I--I dasn't! We been married thirty year, Mrs. Har'rot, an' we never had a quarrel--so to speak. Of course we had spats off an' on when I got worrited wantin' to go see Eliza Louise--she's the only child I ever had, Mis' Har'rot. She was a big girl when I married pa. But we never had no conjuglar rows. Pa, he'd say, 'Wait till after killin'.' I'd wait. Then 't would be the thrashin', or the hay, or else pa would predicate that there'd be a cheap rate, soon, an' I'd better wait for that! Fifteen years have gone that away, Mis' Har'rot. And the things I've done for his sons--'specially Tommy. You ask me to tell you sometimes about the things I done for Tommy--an' when he was a-sparkin'. It's no use talkin'." She read the message over and again her eyes filled. "If I wanted to ever so I couldn't git the money out of pa. The fare to Illinois is all of $17."

"I know where you kin borrow $17," cried Mrs. Harriot. Her old eyes kindled with the excitement of the occasion. "My niece in Bubble has saved $21. When she has all of twenty-five she's goin' to buy a plush parlor set at the county seat. But she won't raise the other $4 soon. She's been two years savin' this. You'd likely be takin' the night train from Bubble anyhow. She'd be proud to let you have the loan of the money. Say you'll go, Mis' McLelland."

Mrs. McLelland rose. A great resolve thrilled her--transfigured her. A flush came into her tanned old face--a color and a light. Determination of self-assertion was a revivifying draft, stimulating as rare old wine.

"I will!" she cried. "I'll go!"

Mrs. Harriot bounced up.

"That's right! Now we'll git to packin'." She ran across the room and jerked the horsehair trunk forward.

"You'll gather up the carpet rags an' tell Sam to save the eggs an' let pa trade 'em when he goes to town--pa'll have to see about the churnin' himself--an'--there! it's on at last--I usn't to weigh but a hundred an' eighty, though you wouldn't think it. Hand me the net fichu--an' the brooch. Eliza Louise's father give it to me when we were married. There's a pair of kid gloves in the bureau drawer next to pa's necktie. I ain't ever wore them, though it's six year since I got 'em for Tommy's weddin'. It seems sinful to put real kid gloves on. It wears 'em out. Carryin' them shows you've got 'em, an' keeps 'em lookin' nice. Well, I'm going. I'm under complications for your help, Mis' Har'rot. I'll send you a postal card after I git there. Wait! I'll put some of them sody biscuits an' a bit of the spice cake in my valise. They'll stay my stomach till I git to Eliza Louise's house. It's terrible rapacious buyin' food on trains, an' I won't be more'n twenty-two hours on the way. Well, goodby, Mis' Har'rot!"

"Goodby!"

The mistress of the house lumbered out into the dust and glare, a ponderous and portly figure in all the glory of the green gown with the orange vine, a bonnet on the top of which three ostrich tips which once had perhaps possessed the grace to curl, stood stiff as grenadiers on sentry duty, a pair of gloves clutched tightly in one hand and an apoplectic old valise in the other.

The wagon way to the road was rough and dusty. The road was dusty, but not so rough. It was a main traveled road. Mrs. McLelland turned westward and plodded on. At first she held herself erect and walked briskly. But after awhile her steps flagged and her progress was less rapid. As she had remarked to Mrs. Harriot it was a good three miles to Bubble. That was the time when the McLellands lived on their farm across the State line in Kansas, before Mr. McLelland had attained the dearest desire of his heart and become an undertaker in a town having the actual population of 500 bodies--souls were not considered much in Bubble in those days.

"Sakes!" she panted, "but it's hot! Seems like some Joshua's been commandin' that there sun to stand still an' it's obeyin' him."

A couple of wagons coming home from town or mill jolted by her. The drivers, lurching forward on their seats, gave her a stolid nod. There was no chance of a lift. No one was going into town at that hour. Dipping and twisting, blurred, yellow, and apparently interminable, the road stretched away into the vivid, copper-colored sky. A flock of birds whirred overhead and settled in a cottonwood by the roadside; beautiful, jet black, shining things, with breasts of gleaming scarlet just dashed with gold. On she plodded, now past a lonely farmhouse, now by recumbent cattle, now under walls of sunflowers, now over a bridge spanning the dry bed of a creek in which swine huddled, black and unsightly--on and on.

"I'm beat!" groaned Mrs. McLelland. "I'm beat! An' I ain't more'n half way, if I'm that."

She sank down on a grass ridge at the side of the road. Her bonnet was awry. The perspiration poured down her flushed face. She was breathing heavily. A boy came skipping along the road--a little, skinny, freckled, bare-legged boy. He stopped before the traveler.

"Hallo, Mrs. Mc. Goin' away?"

"Yes--into Bubble. Then on the train."

"I'll give you a lift with that bag." He picked it up and started off. She lumbered up and after him.

"You're reel commodious, Dicky Peters," she declared, gratefully. Relieved of the bag, her journey was less wearisome. The sun was going down at last, and here, between the high hedges of osage orange, was shade and comparative coolness.

"O, that's nothin'!" he trotted beside her, bending sideways under the weight of the bag. "When my step-pa was shinglin' your barn you give me three cookies."

"Eh?"

"An' when I let your white cow into the cornstalks you didn't tell him. He's ha' licked the hide off'n me."

"Yes."

"An' you let me git two hull pocketfuls of cherries off'n your tree before you sicked the dog on me."

"Did I?" She felt cheered. She began to think there was gratitude in the world. The two went on, she pleased by the companionship, he proud of his prowess with the bag, which bumped and thudded against his bare little legs. They went out on the highroad again. The sun had set. Purple shadows lurked along the creek. The air was palpitant and shimmering in its transition from amber to amethyst. Suddenly Mrs. McLelland stood still. From afar down the dim stretch ahead came to her keen old ears a familiar sound.

"Hark!" She clutched her companion's arm. "Ain't that a hoss--Tommy's bay hoss?"

Distinctly to the listeners came on the still evening air the sound of hoofbeats on the hard road.

On the rise of the hill ahead three things came simultaneously into sight--a spring wagon, a horse, and a man.

"It's Tommy!" she said, "pa's Tommy. Like as not pa ast him to go out to our place till he got back. What'll I tell him? Here he is now, and--O, Lordy!"

The man on the wagon seat heard the despairing cry--saw the massive, motionless form.

"Maria!" he cried.

"Pa!" she wailed.

He clambered down--confronted her. His head barely reached her shoulder. He was a spare, lame, white-headed, white-bearded, stern-eyed, little old farmer. To his trembling wife he represented just then all that was most mighty in existence, most inexorable in fate, and most inevitable in destiny.

"Where are you a-goin'? What's that bag for?"

"I'm a-goin' to see Eliza Louise," answered Mrs. McLelland.

"You--You're a-goin'--" He broke off stammering.

"I'm a-goin' to see the only child an' grandchild I got. You got a heap of 'em, pa. I ain't got but the two. An one of 'em's sick--dyin', maybe. O!" she burst out piteously, "I ain't never stood up again you before, pa--never!"

Silence. He tries to speak, once--twice, but in vain. Thirty years of obedience, sacrifice, submission, and now insubordination--now rebellion! A General, struck in the face by a private, could not feel more outraged--more aghast.

"It's--it's a--a put up job!" he squeaked. "You planned it--an' then waited till I should go to Lincoln. But I only went far as Tommy's, an'--"

"No--no, pa. You'll see the telegram on the table to home. It come while Mis' Har'rot an' me was a -cuttin' carpet rags. It's a real telegram.

He took a step nearer her.

"Where'd you git the money to go?" he cried, his thin voice rising shrilly.

She shut her lips hard. She would not get her friends into trouble.

The legs and arms of Mr. McLelland jiggled like those parts of a jumping jack when the string is pulled.

"I know--I know," he declared, dancing around in ankle deep dust, to the delight of Dicky Peters, who was watching him with an irreverent grin. "You found the $20 I got hid in my winter mitts in the old stove in the barn!"

"I never!" protested Mrs. McLelland. "I never knowed there was a cent there, pa!"

A short, incredulous laugh answered her. Mr. McLelland climbed to his perch on the spring wagon and drove off without a word. Mrs. McLelland stood immovable until the sound of hoof-beats and wagon wheels became inaudible. Twenty dollars lying there! And she was going to try to borrow her railroad fare in town. She had told the truth when she said she had neither known of it nor touched it, but--

"I can and I will!" she c cried aloud.

Dicky Peters jumped.

"Will what, Mrs. Mc.?

"Dicky, you set right down there beside that bag," she directed tremulously. "I got to go back, but I won't be long. I'll drive back. You kin open the bag, Dicky. There's some sody biscuits in it, an' some spice cake. You kin eat it all, Dicky-- if you can hold it all."

Dicky gurgled ecstatically, promptly took her at her word, and fell to work. She turned and hastened back the way she had come. She felt stronger than when she had left home. Excitement upheld her. She felt surprised at the swiftness with which she found herself walking. She was not conscious of fatigue when she reached the rear of the barn, which she had approached by making a detour around the sorghum patch back of the house. There was no light about the place, nor any sound. The chores were done long before. A lamp was never lit in the McLelland home in summer. The inmates went to bed at dark. Kerosene cost money. Five minutes later a bulky shadow moved among the stirless shadows in the barn. There was the click of iron. Then the barn doors were softly set wide. A huge thing hurled itself around the corner of the house--into the barn, a warm and shaggy thing.

"Sh--s--sh, Rover!"

Rover poked his nose into the hand of his mistress and waved his plume-like tail in mute but joyous greeting. It was not for nothing Mrs. McLelland had helped her spouse in the hard and active labor to be performed on a farm when they were both younger and less rheumatic. With feverish rapidity but accurate precision the trappings of the bay horse were adjusted, the animal backed between the shafts of the spring wagon, and all made ready for flight. Then Rover saw the horse led around the barn, a heavy old figure climb with many trippings and ineffectual efforts to the seat, and all disappear around the patch of sorghum in the direction of the main road.

Mr. McLelland as a rule slept soundly and rose early. On that particular night he slept badly and rose earlier than usual. He missed Marie. Something was wrong. He felt a sense of loss, of disturbance.

"It's the heat," he assured himself. "An' the musquitoes was bad last night--a body couldn't sleep with 'em. I'll feel all right when I git some coffee."

When he had lighted the fire and put on the kettle he went out in the yard.

"Sam!" he called. "You, Sam!"

There was no reply. Sam must be up, because the barndoors stood wide. He had likely gone into the field. But Sam usually did the chores and then had his breakfast before he began the main work of the day. His master hobbled down to the barn, Rover frisking before him.

"Eh--what?" he began, and stood there rubbing his eyes. The bay horse was gone. The spring wagon was gone. Tommy's bay horse and spring wagon! Thieves--robbers! A terrifying thought convulsed his weatherbeaten face. The twenty dollars--in the mittens--in the oven of the old stove! A minute later he had wrenched the door open--was peering in. The oven was empty. Neither to sight nor to groping touch were mittens or money revealed.

Mr. McLelland, staggering into Harriot's house just at "sunup," was a pitiable figure. Ten years in ten minutes appeared to have been added to his burden of age.

"Robbed!" he burst forth. "Robbed, an' by that scoundrel Sam, I'm sure! Twenty dollars! 'Twas where I put it when I got home last night, for I went a-purpose to look--had a reason for lookin'. Now it's gone--Tommy's horse and spring wagon's gone, too--an' there ain't no sign of Sam. We must git the marshal out an' a posse--quick!"

Mrs. Harriot pushed him into a chair.

"I dunno whether Sam took your money or not, but he wouldn't be such a fool as to take a horse an' wagon that every one knows for miles around. When Sam come back last night an' I told him your wife had gone East on a visit, he swore. He said he wasn't goin' to stay alone of you--said he'd be clean starved. Said if 't wasn't for what Mrs. Mc. give him to eat unbeknownst to you he never could stand up to his work. 'Mis' Har'rot,' he says to me, 'if I have to depend on the old man, I'll git that lean that when I got a pain I won't k now whether it's backache or stomachache that ails me,' he says, 'So I'm goin' to quit in the mornin', he says. Look there! Who's drivin' up here?"

They crowded to the door.

"It's Tommy's horse an' spring wagon!" cried McLelland. The town marshal jumped down, came towards them.

"How do, McLelland? This is your son's rig. I seen you drive out home with it yesterday. We found it hitched just outside town early this morning. Don't know who left it there."

Mr. McLelland poured the story of his misfortunes into the officer's attentive ear, with the result that a warrant was speedily secured for one Sam Brown. Before noon that individual was taken from his mother's house into town, where he sat in the drug store until the Justice of the Peace had finished playing pool across the street. Then Sam Brown was bound over to the County Court for the theft of $20 from Mr. McLelland, "one of our most prosperous and respected farmers," as the local paper stated.

One week passed--two weeks. It was known that Mrs. McLelland had walked into Bubble, dusty and fatigued, on the night of the disappearance of Sam Brown. It was also known that she had bought a ticket for Illinois, and had taken the 11 o'clock train. Mrs. Harriot had not seen her niece, but felt convinced she had loaned Mrs. McLelland the money for her trip East. The only ones having guilty knowledge of the actual proceedings were Dicky Peters and Rover, and neither of those offered evidence.

Those were hard days for Mr. McLelland. His loneliness weighed on him. He missed the ponderous presence, the well-cooked meals, and the unceasing chatter of his spouse. He took to sitting up until 9 o'clock, and even occasionally lighting a lamp in the evening. He called regularly at the postoffice for mail, but no letter came for him. The feeling of remorse he would not admit even to himself rendered him irritable. "She allus set store by that wuthless Sam," he declared. "I'll let her see the kind of a serpent she's been warmin' in her buzzum."

So he folded up the town and county papers and sent them to her. She duly received them. Sitting by the chair of her convalescent granddaughter she read them.

"Eliza Louise," she called, "you tell Lemuel to hitch the team. There's a train this afternoon. I'm goin' home."

Eliza Louise thought instantly of her stepfather.

"Is pa sick?" she asked.

"No, not that I know. But I'm a deceiver. I'm a retrograde. I'm as bad as a common conjurer."

"Perjurer, you mean. Why, ma!"

"It's all the same. I'm as wicked as one. Poor Sam Brown a-sufferin' for my voraciousness! I'm a absconder, Eliza Louise--that's what I am. And I'm goin' straight home. I've had a fine visit, an' I feel all of ten year younger. It's been worth standin' up again pa for--though I don't know as I'll ever do it again."

It was the day set for the trial of Sam Brown at the county seat. Mr. McLelland, supported by the presence of his son Tommy, Tommy's wife, Tommy's children, and several interested and sympathetic friends, was donning his black coat and necktie preparatory to his drive to court, when the door opened and Mrs. McLelland walked in.

"Maria!"

He stood staring at her, his coat half on.

"Pa, Sam Brown never took your money."

"Didn't! Who did, then?"

"I did."

"You! Mrs. Harriot told me you borryed the money to go from her niece."

"I was projectin' to do that same when I started. But when you told me where you had $20 layin' ubiquitous, so to speak, I thought as how I had some right to it. I've worked hard for you, pa, for thirty year--for you an' your other wife's prodigy. An' I never stood up again you before."

"But the--the horse an' wagon?"

Mrs. McLelland removed her bonnet and sat down.

"I reckoned," dryly, "that I was compensated to a ride in Tommy's wagon, after all I done for Tommy sense he wasn't but 4 year old--even to makin' his courtin' neckties out'n the strings of the bunnit I got when I married Eliza Louise's father."

Tom McLelland turned red. She giggled.

"We'll be goin'," they said.

And they went. So did the neighbors. Mrs. McLelland told of her trip while she got dinner. The two sat down.

"'Taint but 11, pa. You got time enough to git there an' have the case dismissed. An' bring Sam back with you. I'll make a chicking pot pie for supper. I bet you ain't had any chicking pot pie sense I been gone, pa, an' you've got such a affinity for it, pa. Why, pa, you're stranglin'! You'll scald yourself a-gulpin' down that tea!"

He blinked at her across the cup.

"Dry fur corn!" he said.