Neither of the old
people wore glasses, and their light was a tallow candle; they
couldn't afford "none o' them newfangled lamps." The room was
small, the chairs wooden, and the walls bare-a home where
poverty was a never-absent guest. The old lady looked pathetically
little, wizened, and hopeless in her ill-fitting garments (whose
original color had long since vanished), intent as she was on the
stocking in her knotted, stiffened fingers, but there was a peculiar
sparkle in her little black eyes, and an unusual resolution in the
straight line of her withered and shapeless lips. Suddenly she
paused, stuck a needle in the spare knob of hair at the back of her
head, and looking at Ripley, said decisively: "Ethan Ripley, you'll
haff to do your own cooking from now on to New Year's; I'm goin'
back to Yaark State."
The old man's leather-brown face stiffened into a look of quizzical
surprise for a moment; then he cackled in-credulously: "Ho! Ho!
har! Sho! be y', now? I want to know if y' be."
"Well, you'll find out."
"Goin' to start tomorrow, Mother?"
"No, sir, I ain't; but I am on Thursday. I want to get to Sally's by
Sunday, sure, an' to Silas's on Thanksgivin'.
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