It came while the midday dinner was in preparation. It rose to boiling-point amidst the steam from her cooking pots. Finally it bubbled over, much as might one of her own kettles.
Joan was standing in the kitchen giving her orders preparatory to departing to the camp, whither she was going to mail her letter to her aunt at Beasley's store.
"You see," she was saying, "I'll have to make some changes in the house. I'm expecting my aunt from St. Ellis to come and stay with me. She won't be able to do with the things which have been sufficient for me. She will have my room. I shall buy new furniture for it. I shall get Beasley to order it for me from Leeson Butte. Then I shall use the little room next yours. And while we're making these changes we'll have a general housecleaning. You might begin this afternoon on the room I am going to move into."
The old woman turned with a scarlet face. It may have been the result of the heat of cooking. Then again it may have had other causes.
"An' when, may I ast, do I make bricks?" she inquired with ponderous sarcasm.
Joan stood abashed for a moment. So unexpected was the retort, so much was it at variance with her own mood that she had no answer ready, and the other was left with the field to herself.
"Now jest look right here, Miss Joan--ma'm," she cried, flourishing a cooking spoon to point her words. "I ain't a woman of many words by no means, as you might say, but what I sure says means what I mean, no more an' no less, as the sayin' is. I've kep' house all my life, an' I reckon ther's no female from St. Ellis ken show _me_. I've bin a wife an' a mother, an' raised my offsprings till they died. I did fer a man as knew wot's wot in my George D. An' if I suffered fer it, it was jest because I know'd my duty an' did it, no matter the consequences to me an' mine. I tell you right here, an' I'm a plain-spoken woman who's honest, as the sayin' is, I turn out no house, nor room, nor nothin' of an afternoon. I know my duty an' I do it. Ther's a chapter of the Bible fer every day o' my life, an' it needs digestin' good--with my dinner. An' I don't throw it up fer nobody."
"But--but----" Joan began to protest, but the other brushed objection aside with an added flourish of her spoon.