Joe was ready at printed matter. He read fast and understandingly, and his face grew paler as his eyes ran on from line to line. When he came to the end, where his mother's wavering signature stood above that of Isom Chase, his head dropped a little lower, his hands lay listlessly, as if paralyzed, on the paper under his eyes. A sudden dejection seemed to settle over him, blighting his youth and buoyancy.
Mrs. Newbolt was making out to be busy over the stove. She lifted the lid of the kettle, and put it down with a clatter; she opened the stove and rammed the fire with needless severity with the poker, and it snapped back at her, shooting sparks against her hand.
"Mother, you've bound me out!" said he, his voice unsteady in its accusing note.
She looked at him, her hands starting out in a little movement of appeal. He turned from the table and sat very straight and stern in his chair, his gaunt face hollowed in shadows, his wild hair falling across his brow.
"Oh, I sold you! I sold you!" she wailed.
She sat again in her place at the table, spiritless and afraid, her hands limp in her lap.
"You've bound me out!" Joe repeated harshly, his voice rasping in his throat.
"I never meant to do it, Joe," she pleaded in weak defense; "but Isom, he said nothing else would save us from the county farm. I wanted to wait and ask you, Joe, and I told him I wanted to ask you, but he said it would be too late!"
"Yes. What else did he say?" asked Joe, his hands clenched, his eyes peering straight ahead at the wall.
She related the circumstances of Chase's visit, his threat of eviction, his declaration that she would become a county charge the moment that she set foot in the road.
There seemed to be nothing more for her to say. She could make no defense of an act which stood before her in all its ugly selfishness. Joe sat still, staring at the wall beyond the stove; she crouched forward in her chair, as if to shrink out of his sight.
Between them the little glass lamp stood, a droning, slow-winged brown beetle blundering against its chimney. Outside, the distant chant of newly wakened frogs sounded; through the open door the warm air of the April night came straying, bearing the incense of the fields and woodlands, where fires smoldered like sleepers sending forth their dreams.