“An’ who wants you to come fur money? What is money, hey? Is it health? Is it happiness? No, no, sonny. If money was any use, my poor Susan would hev been alive to this day. You’ll know better when you’re my age.”
He spat out now, directing the stream into the sink under the big wooden pump.
“Don’t worry ’bout him,” interposed Mrs. Cattermole. “Here’s the table.”
Deacon Hailey waved a rebuking palm. “Dooty afore pleasure, Mrs. Cattermole. See here, sonny, I’ve been talkin’ with Mrs. Cattermole ’bout you. She’s promised me to be a mother to you, Heaven bless her! But I kin’t forget you’ve got a mother o’ your own.”
“She ain’t my mother now, she’s Ruth’s mother,” said Matt, half divining the mumble of words.
“She’s mother to both o’ you. A large heart, thet’s what she’s got. An’ if she’s Ruth’s mother, then I’m your father, hey? An’ it ain’t right of you to disobey your father and mother. But young folks nowadays treats the commandments like old boots,” and the deacon sighed, as if in sympathy with the sorrows of a neglected decalogue.
“I’ve got no father an’ no mother,” said Matt. “An’ I’m goin’ to be a picture-painter soon es I kin. I won’t do _any_thing else, thet’s flat. An’ when I’m bigger I’m goin’ to write to my uncle Matt and see if he kin sell my pictures fur me. If you was to drag me back by force, I’d escape into the woods. An’ I’d work my way to London to be handy my uncle Matt. I reckon he takes in ’prentices same es the boss here. So you jest tell my mother I’m done with her, see! I don’t want to hear any more ’bout it.”
His face resumed its set expression, and his rocking foot its violence.
The deacon cast a reproachful, irate glance at Mrs. Cattermole.
“Did I tell you a lie when I said he warn’t worth thet thar?” he vociferated, snatching the tin dipper from the water-bucket. The noise disturbed the baby, which began to whimper feebly. Matt turned his chair’s back on the deacon and gazed studiously towards the wood-house in the yard. The deacon’s face grew apoplectic. He seemed about to throw the dipper at the back of Matt’s head, but mastering himself he let it fall with a splash, and said, quietly: “I guess you won’t hev me to blame if he turns out all belly an’ no han’s. Some folks’d say I’m offerin’ you a smart, likely young man, with his heart in the wood-pile. But thet’s not Deacon Hailey’s way. He makes a pint of tellin’ the bad pints. He’s a man you could swap a horse with, hey? I tell you, Mrs. Cattermole, thet durned boy is all moonshine an’ viciousness, stuffed with conceit from floor to ridge-piece. Picters, picters, picters, is all he thinks about! Amoosin’ himself--thet’s his idee of life in this vale of tears. I reckon he thinks he’s goin’ to strike Captain Kidd’s treasure. But, arter all, he ain’t _your_ burden. I’ve giv his poor mother a home, an’ I ain’t the man to grudge bite an’ sup to her boy. So even now I don’t mind lettin’ you off. He’s my crost, and I’ve got to bear him. ’Tain’t no use bein’ a Christian only in church, hey?”