Mrs. Simms exhaled to the limit of her flat chest.
"That's all right, then. Johnny--Johnny found a sparkling stone--and he said as how he thought 'twas gold--and he's--he's pestered me to death till I told him he could ask Mr. Steve if he could stake off a claim. Minin's in his blood. My father was a miner, Miss. I guess I'd better get busy about dinner, not stand talking here," she explained as she hurried away.
Benson's eyes followed her as he perched on a corner of the porch railing and lighted his pipe. Peg had gone into the house to help. He could hear the two voices, the woman's a high strident tone, the girl's like music with a joyous note running through it. The delectable odor of bacon and frying chicken drifted out to him and set his already rampant appetite clamoring for satisfaction. Mrs. Simms had cut that boy and pebble story from whole cloth, if he was a judge of human nature, and he'd bet his last dollar that he was, Benson thought, as he changed his seat to one from which he could look inside the room which served as living-room and dining-room at Upper Farm.
It was for all the world like the pictures one saw in mail-order catalogues, he thought with a smile. There was an old-time melodion in one corner and an up-to-date phonograph in another. There was golden oak furniture in profusion. The walls were covered with a paper on which impossible roses fought for supremacy with more impossible alleged birds of paradise. How could a person think between such walls, Tommy wondered. He had the feeling as he looked that birds and roses were being stuffed down his throat. In the midst of his reflections Mrs. Simms called him.
The three children slipped shyly into their chairs after the strangers were seated. They were boys, ranging in age from four to ten. Johnny had not come home, apparently. They had almost white hair and eyes shaped like the eyes of sculpins, which they kept fixed on Peggy Glamorgan, after the hypnotic effect of the company blue and white checked table-cloth, the pressed glass spoon-holder, and the best gold-banded plates with a big S in a funereal-like wreath on the border, had worn off.
Benson smiled to himself as he watched them. They were doing frankly and unreproved what he longed to do. Extreme youth had some compensations. He lost himself in a radiant dream of possibilities and became as absorbed with his inward vision as the scions of the house of Simms were with the material and fascinating Peg herself. He was quite unconscious that the girl was observing him in amused wonder.