“Yes, you see, he doesn’t change, himself–not the least little bit in
the world–he’s always Mulberry Sellers.”
“I can see that plain enough.”
“Just the same old scheming, generous, good-hearted, moonshiny, hopeful,
no-account failure he always was, and still everybody likes him just as
well as if he was the shiningest success.”
“They always did: and it was natural, because he was so obliging and
accommodating, and had something about him that made it kind of easy to
ask help of him, or favors–you didn’t feel shy, you know, or have that
wish–you–didn’t–have–to–try feeling that you have with other
people.”
“It’s just so, yet; and a body wonders at it, too, because he’s been
shamefully treated, many times, by people that had used him for a ladder
to climb up by, and then kicked him down when they didn’t need him any
more. For a time you can see he’s hurt, his pride’s wounded, because he
shrinks away from that thing and don’t want to talk about it–and so I
used to think now he’s learned something and he’ll be more careful
hereafter–but laws! in a couple of weeks he’s forgotten all about it,
and any selfish tramp out of nobody knows where can come and put up a
poor mouth and walk right into his heart with his boots on.”
“It must try your patience pretty sharply sometimes.”
“Oh, no, I’m used to it; and I’d rather have him so than the other way.
When I call him a failure, I mean to the world he’s a failure; he isn’t
to me. I don’t know as I want him different much different, anyway.
I have to scold him some, snarl at him, you might even call it, but I
reckon I’d do that just the same, if he was different–it’s my make.
But I’m a good deal less snarly and more contented when he’s a failure
than I am when he isn’t.”
“Then he isn’t always a failure,” said Hawking, brightening.
“Him? Oh, bless you, no. He makes a strike, as he calls it, from time
to time. Then’s my time to fret and fuss. For the money just flies–
first come first served. Straight off, he loads up the house with
cripples and idiots and stray cats and all the different kinds of poor
wrecks that other people don’t want and he does, and then when the
poverty comes again I’ve got to clear the most of them out or we’d
starve; and that distresses him, and me the same, of course.
Here’s old Dan’l and old Jinny, that the sheriff sold south one of the
times that we got bankrupted before the war–they came wandering back
after the peace, worn out and used up on the cotton plantations,
helpless, and not another lick of work left in their old hides for the
rest of this earthly pilgrimage–and we so pinched, oh so pinched for the
very crumbs to keep life in us, and he just flung the door wide, and the
way he received them you’d have thought they had come straight down from
heaven in answer to prayer. I took him one side and said, ‘Mulberry we
can’t have them–we’ve nothing for ourselves–we can’t feed them.’
He looked at me kind of hurt, and said, ‘Turn them out?–and they’ve come
to me just as confident and trusting as–as–why Polly, I must have
bought that confidence sometime or other a long time ago, and given my
note, so to speak–you don’t get such things as a gift–and how am I
going to go back on a debt like that? And you see, they’re so poor,
and old, and friendless, and– But I was ashamed by that time, and shut
him off, and somehow felt a new courage in me, and so I said, softly,
‘We’ll keep them–the Lord will provide.’ He was glad, and started to
blurt out one of those over-confident speeches of his, but checked
himself in time, and said humbly, ‘I will, anyway.’ It was years and
years and years ago. Well, you see those old wrecks are here yet.”
“But don’t they do your housework?”
“Laws! The idea. They would if they could, poor old things, and perhaps