It caused Aunt Eppie endless worry and chagrin to see the way her brother mismanaged his land. The overseer was letting it all, she said, and the tenants did as they liked and stole from him before his very face. It was a shame and a disgrace.
She said as much to him time and again. But he went his own way. He treated her always with politeness and deference and only smiled gently and enigmatically when she nagged him. The smile drove her to distraction.
Though the Pettits owned over a thousand acres of good land and lived in a house of seventeen rooms and were said to have money in all the banks in Scott County, their way of life was not different in any essential from that of their tenants. It was even more stark and barren and sordid than most, for in the humbler homes there was sometimes love and fun, and here there was neither. The meals were eaten in dull silence except when Aunt Eppie remembered something that somebody hadn't done or when the hired girls and farm hands, who ate from the same oilcloth as their employers, got to sparring with each other.
Two hired hands ate at the dinner table, but got their breakfasts and supper at home. These were Jabez Moorhouse and Jerry Blackford, second son of Andrew Blackford, who owned a small farm next to the Pippingers. Jabez, who, when not drunk, usually held his peace, rarely spoke at the table except to ask for another portion of string beans or to have the sorghum pitcher passed to him. When he raised his head from his plate his rather vague blue eyes seemed to be either turned inward or looking at something a long distance away. Jerry, who had come successfully through his cat-torturing period, had grow into a quiet, decent, clean appearing young fellow, blond and ruddy like David of old and good to look upon in his strong young manhood. He was not more given to conversation than Jabez.
Fortunately for Judith the blight of bareness and dullness that lay over Aunt Eppie's household did not extend to the barnyard. There the morning sunlight fell as goldenly as in princes' courtyards. The geese were as dignified, the turkeys as proud, and the hens as busy as any others of their kind, and Judith enjoyed ministering to their needs and watching their ways.