His mother went by, immensely fat, yet sitting her cart-horse firm as a rock.
“The little dog had ’e by the nose proper that time, my great soft bullock,” she jeered, and rode on, laughing. She hated Eli; as master of Bosula he kept her short of money, even going to the length of publicly crying down her credit. Had he not done so, they would have been ruined long since instead of in a fair state of prosperity, but Teresa took no count of that. She was never tired of informing audiences—preferably in Eli’s presence—that if her other son had been spared, her own precious boy Ortho, things would have been very different. _He_ would not have seen her going in rags, without a penny piece to bless herself, not he. Time, in her memory, had washed away all the elder’s faults, leaving only virtues exposed, and those grossly exaggerated. She would dilate for hours on his good looks, his wit, his courage, his loving consideration for herself, breaking into hot tears of rage when she related the fancied indignities she suffered at the hands of the paragon’s unworthy brother.
She was delighted that Polwhele had bested Eli, and rode home jingling her winnings on the event. Eli went on dressing, unmoved by his mother’s jibes. As a boy he had learnt to close his ears to the taunts of Rusty Rufus, and he found the accomplishment most useful. When Teresa became abusive he either walked out of the house or closed up like an oyster and her tirades beat harmlessly against his spiritual shell. Words, words, nothing but words; his contempt for talk had not decreased as time went on.
He pulled his belt up, hustled into his best blue coat and was knotting his neckcloth when somebody behind him said, “Well wrastled, Eli.”
He turned and saw Mary Penaluna with old Simeon close beside.
Eli shook his head. “He was smaller than I, naught but a little man. I take shame not to have beaten en.”
But Mary would have none of it. “I see no shame then,” she said warmly. “They miners do nothing but wrastle, wrastle all day between shifts and underground too, so I’ve heard tell—but you’ve got other things to do, Eli; ’tis a wonder you stood up to en so long. And they’re nothing but a passell o’ tricksters, teddn what I do call fitty wrastling at all.”