In this pressing, sweltering labor, Gilbert dulled, though he could not conquer, his unhappy mood. Mary Potter, with a true mother's instinct, surmised a trouble, but the indications were too indefinite for conjecture. She could only hope that her son had not been called upon to suffer a fresh reproach, from the unremoved stain hanging over his birth.
Miss Betsy Lavender's company at this time was her greatest relief, in a double sense. No ten persons in Kennett possessed half the amount of confidences which were intrusted to this single lady; there was that in her face which said: "I only blab what I choose, and what's locked up, _is_ locked up." This was true; she was the greatest distributor of news, and the closest receptacle of secrets--anomalous as the two characters may seem--that ever blessed a country community.
Miss Betsy, like Deb Smith, knew that she could be of service on the Potter farm, and, although her stay was perforce short, on account of an approaching house-warming near Doe-Run, her willing arms helped to tide Mary Potter over the heaviest labor of harvest. There were thus hours of afternoon rest, even in the midst of the busy season, and during one of these the mother opened her heart in relation to her son's silent, gloomy moods.
"You'll perhaps say it's all my fancy, Betsy," she said, "and indeed I hope it is; but I know you see more than most people, and two heads are better than one. How does Gilbert seem to you?"
Miss Betsy mused awhile, with an unusual gravity on her long face. "I dunno," she remarked, at length; "I've noticed that some men have their vapors and tantrums, jist as some women have, and Gilbert's of an age to--well, Mary, has the thought of his marryin' ever come into your head?"
"No!" exclaimed Mary Potter, with almost a frightened air.
"I'll be bound! Some women are lookin' out for daughter-in-laws before their sons have a beard, and others think theirs is only fit to wear short jackets when they ought to be raisin' up families. I dunno but what it'll be a cross to you, Mary,--you set so much store by Gilbert, and it's natural, like, that you should want to have him all to y'rself,--but a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife,--or somethin' like it. Yes, I say it, although nobody clove unto me."