THE REVOLT OF “MOTHER”

[Footnote:  From “A New England Nun and Other Stories,” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.  Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Bros.  Reprinted by special permission.]

“Father!”

“What is it?”

“What are them men diggin’ over there in the field for?”

There was a sudden dropping and enlarging of the lower part of the old man’s face, as if some heavy weight had settled therein; he shut his mouth tight, and went on harnessing the great bay mare.  He hustled the collar on to her neck with a jerk.

“Father!”

The old man slapped the saddle upon the mare’s back.

“Look here, father, I want to know what them men are diggin’ over in the field for, an’ I’m goin’ to know.”

“I wish you’d go into the house, mother, an’ ’tend to your own affairs,” the old man said then.  He ran his words together, and his speech was almost as inarticulate as a growl.

But the woman understood; it was her most native tongue.  “I ain’t goin’ into the house till you tell me what them men are doin’ over there in the field,” said she.

Then she stood waiting.  She was a small woman, short and straight-waisted like a child in her brown cotton gown.  Her forehead was mild and benevolent between the smooth curves of gray hair; there were meek downward lines about her nose and mouth; but her eyes, fixed upon the old man, looked as if the meekness had been the result of her own will, never of the will of another.

They were in the barn, standing before the wide-open doors.  The spring air, full of the smell of growing grass and unseen blossoms, came in their faces.  The deep yard in front was littered with farm wagons and piles of wood, on the edges, close to the fence and the house, the grass was a vivid green, and there were some dandelions.

The old man glanced doggedly at his wife as he tightened the last buckles on the harness.  She looked as immovable to him as one of the rocks in his pastureland, bound to the earth with generations of blackberry vines.  He slapped the reins over the horse, and started forth from the barn.

“Father!” said she.

The old man pulled up.  “What is it?”

“I want to know what them men are diggin’ over there in that field for.”

“They’re diggin’ a cellar, I s’pose, if you’ve got to know.”

“A cellar for what?”

“A barn.”

“A barn?  You ain’t goin’ to build a barn over there where we was goin’ to have a house, father?”

The old man said not another word.  He hurried the horse into the farm wagon, and clattered out of the yard, jouncing as sturdily on his seat as a boy.

The woman stood a moment looking after him, then she went out of the barn across a corner of the yard to the house.  The house, standing at right angles with the great barn and a long reach of sheds and out-buildings, was infinitesimal compared with them.  It was scarcely as commodious for people as the little boxes under the barn eaves were for doves.