Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/112

 The house, a very old one, was much fallen into decay. Since his wife's death some twenty-odd years before, Uncle Nat Carberry had lived in it quite alone. The repairs that he had made during that time had been of a makeshift character.

"It'll last fer as long as I'm a-goin to need it," he had been in the habit of saying for the last twenty years, whenever he pasted paper over a broken window pane or stuffed rags into a chink in the wall where the mud had fallen away. Now at last he needed it no more.

The household goods had been moved out into the yard. The heirs, the old man's eight children, were keeping a watchful eye on them to see that nobody stole any of the smaller articles. A walnut dropleaf table covered with a square of hideous yellow oilcloth worn through at the corners, was spread with coarse white earthenware dishes, a few pieces of old blue willow ware, an eight-day clock, a handful of wooden-handled steel knives and forks, a few bits of cheap glassware, two small glass lamps and a pair of beautiful brass candlesticks. Near by stood an old horsehair-covered walnut couch with broken springs and stuffing sticking out through many holes in the horsehair; a mahogany chest of drawers, solid and massive, but much scarred and with most of the drawer knobs gone, a walnut bedstead and a few chairs.

On a battered kitchen table was massed a collection of smoked-up pots and pans, bowls, skillets, strainers, and the like. Underneath stood kegs, buckets, crocks of various sizes, stone jugs, and other cellar accumulations. Several dozen balls of carpet rags that had been sewn by Uncle Nat's wife before she died and had lain in the bottom of an old chest ever since, were piled in a clothes basket.

Jerry and Judith strolled about among the things looking them over. They came to an old rocking chair of hard maple. The back, high and comfortably curved, was of woven cane. The original cane seat had long since given out and been replaced by narrow strips of horsehide neatly interwoven in basket fashion. The curved arms were worn paintless and smooth and polished by the laying on of many shirt sleeves.