Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/108

104 month now, come Sunday. P'raps some er them thar Wheelers is been a callin'."

Rolfe grunted his disapproval of whomever had been meddling with his precious jug and poured out a generous drink for Aunt Peachy and one for himself. It was well known that Elizabeth's one brother, who occasionally came to see his sister, was a strict church member and a teetotaler, but Aunt Peachy always intimated that he was responsible for any diminution in the Bolling supply of liquor. No lock was proof against her clever old fingers, and the jug of whisky might just as well have been left on the kitchen table for safety as locked in the cupboard. With a bent hairpin or a crooked nail the old woman could have picked any lock. Rolfe Bolling always locked up his jug and Aunt Peachy always stole from him what liquor she wanted. "Liquor's harder an' harder to git," said Rolfe, as he took a great gulp from the tin cup.

Elizabeth sniffed disdainfully. The smell of the whisky was sickening to her. There had been moments in those twenty-five years of her life at The Hedges when she had felt that she would go mad and smash the brown jug. She had even had the courage to remonstrate with her husband and the old negress, trying to per-