Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/168

 what he reads his Bible for—gettin' new hate-texts dug up to scare Joel."

They stood beneath the letters now that seemed to radiate a fierce heat and energy in the noontide glare impossible to associate with that mild little man in the house.

"And do they scare him?" asked Delight, shivering in spite of the heat.

"I guess they do. He can't take his eyes off that wall as far as he can see it. I often watch him comin' down the road glarin' at it, and when Pa paints up a new one Joel'll sometimes take to his bed for a whole day, he's that upset."

"Pore lad! And his mother—is she against him, too?"

"Against him? Why, she's the fiercest of the two. But she hates his wife far worse than him. That was the trouble. Joel, he married Steven Thurtell's daughter, Mary, and Steven and Pa has been enemies all their lives. Pa would rather an earthquake'd swallow the farm up than to have a grandson of old Thurtell's own it. The day that baby was born all our blinds were pulled down as if we was in mourning, and a new text was painted about the sins of the father being visited on the son. You know the one. Pa did it wonderful. It just glowered at you. The midwife told us that when Mary sat up in bed and saw it she went right into a screamin' spell, and Joel was runnin' round pullin' his hair and cryin' and cursin' like a crazy man."

Perkin's sallow face was alight now with malicious mirth.

"You've found your tongue, haven't you?" Delight said drily. "You can talk fast enough to tell of cruel doings like those. You'd ought to be ashamed. Why it's no better than a bull-fight, the way they do in Spain. My Granny had a picture of it. There was the poor bull