Gowdy is awful good to us--ain't he, Rowena."
Rowena busied herself with her work; and when Mrs. Fewkes repeated her
appeal, the girl looked out of the window and paused a long time before
she answered,
"Good enough," she finally said. "But I guess he ain't strainin' himself
any to make something of us."
There was something strange and covered up in what she said, and in the
way she said it. She shot a quick glance at me, and then looked down at
her work again.
"Well, Rowena Fewkes!" exclaimed her mother, with her hands thrown up as
if in astonishment or protest. "In all my born days, I never expected to
hear a child of mine--"
Old Man Fewkes came in just then, and cut into the talk by his surprised
exclamation at seeing me there. He had supposed that I had gone out of
his ken forever. He had thought that one winter in this climate would be
all that a young man like me, free as I was to go and come as I pleased,
would stand. As he spoke about my being free, he looked at his wife and
sighed, combing his whiskers with his skinny bird's claws, and showing
the biggest freckles on the backs of his hands that I think I ever saw.
He was still more stooped and frail-looking than when I saw him last;
and when I told him I had settled down for life on my farm, I could see
that I had lost caste with him. He was pining for the open road.
"Negosha," he said, "is the place for a young man. You can be a baron
out there with ten thousan' head of rattle.
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