“For goodness' sake, Joe Beecher, stop crying like a baby,” said she, but she spoke in a queer whisper, for her lips were stiff.
“Going to get a job somewhere,” replied Joe, and went. Soon the women saw him driving a neighbor's cart up the street.
“He's going to cart gravel for John Leach's new sidewalk!” gasped Alma.
“Why don't you stop him?” cried her sister. “You can't have your husband driving a tip-cart for John Leach. Stop him, Alma!”
“I can't stop him,” moaned Alma. “I don't feel as if I could stop anything.”
Her sister gazed at her, and the same expression was on both faces, making them more than sisters of the flesh. Both saw before them a stern boundary wall against which they might press in vain for the rest of their lives, and both saw the same sins of their hearts.
Meantime Jim Bennet was seated in his best parlor and Susan Adkins was whispering to Mrs. Trimmer out in the kitchen.
“I don't know whether he's gone stark, staring mad or not,” whispered Susan, “but he's in the parlor smoking his worst old pipe, and that big tiger tommy is sitting in his lap, and he's let in all the other cats, and they're nosing round, and I don't dare drive 'em out. I took up the broom, then I put it away again. I never knew Mr. Bennet to act so. I can't think what's got into him.”
“No, he didn't say much of anything, but he said it in a way that made my flesh fairly creep. Says he, 'As long as this is my house and my furniture and my cats, Mis' Adkins, I think I'll sit down in the parlor, where I can see to read my paper and smoke at the same time.' Then he holds the kitchen door open, and he calls, 'Kitty, kitty, kitty!' and that great tiger tommy comes in with his tail up, rubbing round his legs, and all the other cats followed after. I shut the door before these last ones got into the parlor.” Susan Adkins regarded malevolently the three tortoise-shell cats of three generations and various stages of growth, one Maltese settled in a purring round of comfort with four kittens, and one perfectly black cat, which sat glaring at her with beryl-colored eyes.
“That black cat looks evil,” said Mrs. Trimmer.
“Yes, he does. I don't know why I didn't drown him when he was a kitten.”
“Why didn't you drown all those Malty kittens?”