Though she might harrow her son's soul, Sarah was incapable of denying
him food, so rising from her knees, she unpinned her skirt, and brought
him coffee and broiled herring from the stove where they had been
keeping hot.
"Where's Archie?" asked Abel, while she plied him with corn muffins.
"Courtin', I reckon, though he'd best be down yonder in the swamp
settin' old hare traps. I never saw sech courtin' as you all's anyhow,"
she concluded. "It don't seem to lead nowhar, nor to end in nothin'
except itself. That's what this here ever-lastin' education has done for
you, Abel--if you hadn't had those books to give you something to think
about, you'd have been married an' settled a long time befo' now. Yo'
grandpa over thar was steddyin' about raisin' a family before he was
twenty."
On either side of the stove, grandfather and grandmother nodded like
an ancient Punch and Judy who were at peace only when they slept.
Grandfather's pipe had gone out in his hand, and from grandmother's lap
a ball of crimson yarn had rolled on the rag carpet before the fire.
Twenty years ago she had begun knitting an enormous coverlet in bright
coloured squares, and it was still unfinished, though the strips, packed
away in camphor, filled a chest in Sarah's store closet.
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