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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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59 relatives. She looked straight at Mattie as she spoke, a faint smile deepening the vertical lines between her nose and chin. When supper was over she rose from her seat and pressed her hand to the flat surface over the region of her heart. “That pie of yours always sets a mite heavy, Matt,” she said, not ill-naturedly. She seldom abbreviated the girl’s name, and when she did so it was always a sign of affability. “I’ve a good mind to go and hunt up those stomach powders I got last year over in Springfield,” she continued. “I ain’t tried them for quite a while, and maybe they’ll help the heartburn.” Mattie lifted her eyes. “Can’t I get them for you, Zeena?” she ventured. “No. They’re in a place you don’t know about,” Zeena answered darkly, with one of her secret looks. She went out of the kitchen and Mattie, rising, began to clear the dishes from the table. As she passed Ethan’s chair their eyes met and clung together desolately. The warm still kitchen looked as peaceful as the night before. The cat had sprung to Zeena’s rocking-chair, and the heat of the fire was beginning to draw out the faint sharp scent of the geraniums. Ethan dragged himself wearily to his feet. “I’ll go out and take a look around,” he said, going toward the passage to get his lantern. As he reached the door he met Zeena coming back into the room, her lips twitching with anger, a flush of excitement on her sallow face. The shawl had slipped from her shoulders and was dragging at her down-trodden heels, and in her hands she carried the fragments of the red glass pickle-dish. “I’d like to know who done this,” she said, looking sternly from Ethan to Mattie. There was no answer, and she continued in a trembling voice: “I went to get those powders I’d put away in father’s old spectacle- case, top of the china-closet, where I keep the things I set store by, so’s folks shan’t meddle with them-” Her voice broke, and two small tears hung on her lashless lids and ran slowly down her cheeks. “It takes the stepladder to get at the top shelf, and I put Aunt Philura Maple’s pickle-dish up there o’ purpose when we was married, and it’s never been down since, ‘cept for the spring cleaning, and then I always lifted it with my own hands, so’s ‘t shouldn’t get broke.” She laid the fragments reverently on the table. “I want to know who done this,” she quavered. At the challenge Ethan turned back into the room and faced her. “I can tell you, then. The cat done it.” “The cat?” “That’s what I said.” She looked at him hard, and then turned her eyes to Mattie, who was carrying the dish-pan to the table. |
