Page:Scribner's Magazine Volume 1.djvu/35

Rh But she's got her dander up naow agin somebuddy that beats them all holler. They won't no Richardsons come puttin' on airs 'raoun' here, an' takin' th' parlor bedroom 'thaout askin', not ef th' ole lady knaows herself–'n' I guess she does."

"What Richardsons?" asked Milton. "Thought Sissly was th' last of 'em–thet they wa'n't no more Eichardsons."

"Why, man alive, ain't Albert's wife a Richardson, th' daughter of Sissly's cousin–you remember, that pock-pitted man who kep' th' fast hoss here one summer. Of course she's a Richardson–full-blooded! When she come up from th' train here this mornin', with Albert, I see by th' ole lady's eye 't she meant misch'f. I didn't want to see no raow, here with a corpse in th' haouse, 'n' so I tried to smoothe matters over, 'n' kind o' quiet Sabriny daown, tellin' her thet they had to come to th' funer'l, 'n' they'd go 'way soon's it was through with, 'n' that Albert, bein' the oldest son, hed a right to th' comp'ny bed-room."

"'N' what'd she say?"

"She didn't say much, 'cep' thet th' Richardsons hed never brung nothin' but bad luck to this haouse, 'n' they never would, nuther. 'N' then she flaounced upstairs to her room, jis's she allus does when she's riled, 'n' she give Albert's wife sech a look, I said to m'self, 'Milady, I wouldn't be in your shoes fer all yer fine fixin's.'"

"Well, she's a dum likely lookin' woman, ef she is a Richardson," said Milton, with something like enthusiasm. "Wonder ef she wears one o' them low-necked gaowns when she's to hum, like th' picters in th' Ledger. They say they all dew, in New York."

"Haow sh'd I knaow!" Alvira sharply responded. "I got enough things to think of, 'thaout both'rin' my head abaout city women's dresses. 'N' you ought to hev, tew. Ef you 'n' Leander'd pay more heed to yer work, 'n' dew yer chores up ship-shape, 'n' spen' less time porin' over them good-fer-nothin' story-papers, th' farm wouldn't look so run-daown 'n' slaouchy. Did yeh hear what Albert said this mornin', when he looked 'raoun'? 'I swan!' he said, 'I b'lieve this is th' seediest lookin' place 'n all Northern New York.' Nice thing fer him to hev to say, wa'n't it!"

"What d' I keer what he says? He ain't th' boss here, by a jug-full!"

N' more's th' pity, tew. He'd make yeh toe th' mark!"

"Yes, 'n' Sabriny 'd make it lively fer his wife, tew. Th' ole fight 'baout th' Fairchileses 'n' th' Eichardsons wouldn't be a succumstance to thet. Sissly 'd thank her stars thet she was dead 'n' buried aout o' th' way."

These two hired people, who discussed their employer and his family with that easy familiarity of Christian names to be found only in Russia and rural America, knew very well what portended to the house when the Richardson subject came up. Alvira Roberts had spent more than twenty years of her life in the thick of the gaseous strife between Fairchild and Richardson. She was a mere slip of a girl, barely thirteen, when she had first hired out at the homestead, and now, black-browed, sallow from much tea-drinking, and with a sharp, deep wrinkle vertically dividing her high forehead, she looked every year of her thirty-five. Compared with her, Milton Squires was a new comer on the farm, but still there were lean old cows over yonder in the barnyard, lazily waiting for the night-march to the pastures, that had been ravenous calves in their gruel-bucket stage when he came.

What these two did not know about the Fairchild family was hardly worth the knowing. Something of what they knew the reader ought here to be told.

, the bowed, gray-haired, lumpish man who at this time sat in the main living room within, feebly rocking himself by the huge wood-stove, and trying vaguely, as he had been for thirty-six hours past, to realize that his wife lay in her final sleep in the adjoining chamber, had forty odd years before been as likely a young farmer as Dearborn County knew. He was fine-looking and popular in those days, and old Seth Fairchild, dying unexpectedly, had left to this elder son his whole