"I mean I must earn my own living. Phebe, I shall have to. Oh, Mammy, you know I cannot blame my brother, but if he had only left a little, just a little for my very own. If he had not made the conditions so hard."
"Tell Mammy agin jes' how yuh stan's, honey," said Phebe soberly.
"It's this way, Mammy. The place is left to Grace and me. As long as she chooses to make it her home I am to live here. If Grace marries she forfeits her right to it, but while she remains a widow she has a claim to the whole farm, the crops, everything. I am permitted only a place to sleep and enough to eat, and if she elects not to stay here, what am I to do? I cannot keep up an establishment on nothing, can I? Oh, Mammy, I did try, you know I did, while Martin lived, I tried to be patient and good. It hurt more than anyone knew when he brought home a silly pretty girl to take my place, to show a petty jealousy of me. You know how I used to delight in saving that I might buy something for Christmas or birthdays that he particularly wanted. Every little possession meant some sacrifice, and when, one by one, all the little treasured things that I had scrimped and saved to get for him, when they were shoved out of sight and something took their place that she had bought, I never said a word though it did hurt. We were such comrades, Mart and I, and I was only a school girl when I began to keep house for him and he came to me with all his confidences. We used to talk over the crops, the investments, this, that, the other thing, and it seemed as if it must always be so until—"
"Yas, honey, yas, I knows." Phebe spoke soothingly.
"She was jealous of every little thing," Linda went on. "She was very sweet and appealing, always calling me 'dear little sister' to Mart and gradually weaning him from me and my interests, subtly poisoning his mind—No, not that exactly, but making him believe he was such a wonderful brother to give me a home, to support me. She never ceased to praise him for what she told him was his great unselfishness. She never ceased to put me in the light of a dependent who had no real right to what he gave. It used to be share and share alike, Mammy, and Mart used to be the one to praise me for making a cheerful home. He used to say that he would work day and night rather than have me go out into the world to make my living, but, Mammy—to-day—Grace said I ought to do it, and I must, for she is going to the city for the winter."
"Law, honey! Law, honey! Mah li'l baby!" groaned Mammy. "Yo' ma an' pa'll riz up in dere grabes ef yuh does dat. Ain't it yo' home 'fore it hers? Ain't yo' gran'daddy an' you gre't-gran'-daddy live hyar? Ain't yuh de one dat has de mostes' right?"
"Yes, Mammy, dear, in the ordinary order of things it would be so, but you know the place was mortgaged up to the last dollar and it was Mart who lifted the mortgage and made the farm all his before father died. According to the law I have no part nor parcel in it except what he chose to leave me. Poor dear Mart, he was so blind, he thought never was such a wife as Grace; he couldn't see that she worked steadily, cleverly, cunningly all the time to build a barrier between us, to chain him fast, to make him see through her eyes, to make me appear a poor, weak incapable creature who ought to be left in her guardianship. Well, she succeeded; my darling brother, whose thought was always for me, made his will in such a way as to render me homeless."
"Lord, have mercy," groaned Mammy, rocking back and forth, the crabs unheeded in their pan.
"Oh, he was innocent enough, poor dear," Linda went on quickly. "He couldn't see anything but that it would be a fine thing for us two to live together like loving sisters always. I would be Grace's right hand; she would be my kind elder sister. That is the way it looked to him. He couldn't see through her little deceits. How could he know that her smiles covered a jealous, grasping nature? How could he know that six months after he left us she would practically turn me out-of-doors, that she would tell me I could not expect anything more than food and shelter for part of the year, and that she intended to spend her winters with her family and only her summers here?"
"Ain't it de troof?" ejaculated Mammy.