The Ragged Lady | Page 7

his teeth,
where it moved up and down, and whipped fantastically about as he
talked, before he answered, "You mean the Claxons?"
"I don't know what thei' name is." Mrs. Lander repeated exactly what
she had said.
The farmer said, "Long, red-headed man, kind of sickly-lookin'?"
"We didn't see the man"--
"Little woman, skinny-lookin; pootty tonguey?"
"We didn't see her, eitha; but I guess we hea'd her at the back of the
house."
"Lot o' children, about as big as pa'tridges, runnin' round in the
bushes?"
"Yes! And a very pretty-appearing girl; about thi'teen or fou'teen, I
should think."
The farmer pulled his fork out of the ground, and planted it with his
person at new slopes in the figure of a letter A, rather more upright than
before. "Yes; it's them," he said. "Ha'n't been in the neighbahood a
great while, eitha. Up from down Po'tland way, some'res, I guess. Built
that house last summer, as far as it's got, but I don't believe it's goin' to
git much fa'tha."
"Why, what's the matta?" demanded Mrs. Lander in an anguish of
interest.
The man in the hay-field seemed to think it more dignified to include

Lander in this inquiry, and he said with a glimmer of the eye for him,
"Hea'd of do-nothin' folks?"
"Seen 'em, too," answered Lander, comprehensively.
"Well, that a'n't Claxon's complaint exactly. He a'n't a do-nothin'; he's a
do-everything. I guess it's about as bad." Lander glimmered back at the
man, but did not speak.
"Kind of a machinist down at the Mills, where he come from," the
farmer began again, and Mrs. Lander, eager not to be left out of the
affair for a moment, interrupted:
"Yes, Yes! That's what the gul said."
"But he don't seem to think't the i'on agreed with him, and now he's
goin' in for wood. Well, he did have a kind of a foot-powa tu'nin' lathe,
and tuned all sots o' things; cups, and bowls, and u'ns for fence- posts,
and vases, and sleeve-buttons and little knick-knacks; but the place
bunt down, here, a while back, and he's been huntin' round for wood,
the whole winta long, to make canes out of for the summa-folks. Seems
to think that the smell o' the wood, whether it's green or it's dry, is goin'
to cure him, and he can't git too much of it."
"Well, I believe it's so, Albe't!" cried Mrs. Lander, as if her husband
had disputed the theory with his taciturn back. He made no other sign
of controversy, and the man in the hay-field went on.
"I hea' he's goin' to put up a wind mill, back in an open place he's got,
and use the powa for tu'nin', if he eva gits it up. But he don't seem to be
in any great of a hurry, and they scrape along somehow. Wife takes in
sewin' and the girl wo'ked at the Middlemount House last season.
Whole fam'ly's got to tu'n in and help s'po't a man that can do
everything."
The farmer appealed with another humorous cast of his eye to Lander;
but the old man tacitly refused to take any further part in the talk,
which began to flourish apace, in question and answer, between his
wife and the man in the hay-field. It seemed that the children had all
inherited the father's smartness. The oldest boy could beat the nation at
figures, and one of the young ones could draw anything you had a mind
to. They were all clear up in their classes at school, and yet you might
say they almost ran wild, between times. The oldest girl was a
pretty-behaved little thing, but the man in the hay-field guessed there
was not very much to her, compared with some of the boys. Any rate,

she had not the name of being so smart at school. Good little thing, too,
and kind of mothered the young ones.
Mrs. Lander, when she had wrung the last drop of information out of
him, let him crawl back to his work, mentally flaccid, and let her
husband drive on, but under a fire of conjecture and asseveration that
was scarcely intermitted till they reached their hotel. That night she
talked along time about their afternoon's adventure before she allowed
him to go to sleep. She said she must certainly see the child again; that
they must drive down there in the morning, and ask her all about
herself.
"Albe't," she concluded; "I wish we had her to live with us. Yes, I do! I
wonder if we could get her to. You know I always did want to adopt a
baby."
"You neva said so," Mr. Lander opened his mouth almost for the first
time, since the talk began.
"I didn't suppose you'd like it,"