Read Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV for Free Online Page B

and say, “I’d say the boy was well beaten. You get your day’s pay, all right!”
    “Let up now,” she said, striding across the goat-cropped yard.
    They ignored her until she was on them and had two of the girls by the collars. Even then, they kept swinging with their fists, not a few of the blows landing on Peggy herself, while the third girl took no pause. Peggy had no choice but to give the two girls she had hold of a stern push, sending them sprawling in the grass, while she dragged the third girl off the boy.
    As she had feared, the boy hadn’t done well under the girls’ blows. His nose was bleeding, and he got up only slowly; when the girl Peggy was holding lunged at him, he scurried on all fours to evade her.
    “Shame on you,” said Peggy. “Whatever he did, it wasn’t worth this!”
    “He killed my squirrel!” cried the girl she held.
    “But how can you have had a squirrel?” asked Peggy. “It would be cruel of
you
to pen one up.”
    “She was never penned,” said the girl. “She was my friend. I fed her and these others saw it—she came to me and I kepther alive through the hard winter. He knew it! He was jealous that the squirrel came to me, and so he killed it.”
    “It was a squirrel!” the boy shouted—hoarsely and rather weakly, but it was clear he
meant
it to be a shout. “How should I know it was yours?”
    “Then you shouldn’t have killed any,” said another of the girls. “Not till you were sure.”
    “Whatever he did to the squirrels,” said Peggy, “even if he was malicious, it was wrong of you and unchristian to knock him down and hurt him so.”
    The boy looked at her now. “Are you the judge?” he asked.
    “Judge? I think not!” said Peggy with a laugh.
    “But you can’t be the Maker, that one’s a boy. I think you’re a judge.” The boy looked even more certain. “Aunt Becca said the judge was coming, and then the Maker, so you can’t be the Maker because the judge ain’t come yet, but you could be the judge because the judge comes first.”
    Peggy knew that other folks often took the words of children to be nonsense, if they didn’t understand them immediately. But Peggy knew that the words of children were always related to their view of the world, and made their own sense if you only knew how to hear them. Someone had told them—Aunt Becca, it was—that a judge and a Maker were coming. There was only one Maker that Peggy knew of. Was Alvin coming here? What was this place, that the children knew of Makers, and had no heartfires?
    “I thought your house was standing empty,” said Peggy, “but I see that it is not.”
    For indeed there now stood a woman in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, watching them placidly as she slowly stirred a bowl with a wooden spoon.
    “Mama!” cried the girl that Peggy still held. “She has me and won’t let go!”
    “It’s true!” cried Peggy at once. “And I still won’t let go, till I’m sure she won’t murder the boy here!”
    “He killed my squirrel, Mama!” cried the girl.
    The woman said nothing, just stirred.
    “Perhaps, children,” said Peggy, “we should go talk to this lady in the doorway, instead of shouting like river rats.”
    “Mother doesn’t like you,” said one of the girls. “I can tell.”
    “That’s a shame,” said Peggy. “Because I like
her
.”
    “Do not,” said the girl. “You don’t know her, and if you did you
stilt
wouldn’t like her because nobody does.”
    “What a terrible thing to say about your mother,” said Peggy.
    “I don’t have to like her,” said the girl. “I
love
her.”
    “Then take me to this woman that you love but don’t like,” said Peggy, “and let me reach my own conclusions about her.”
    As they approached the door, Peggy began to think that the girls might be right. The woman certainly didn’t look welcoming. But for that matter, she didn’t look hostile, either. Her face was empty of emotion. She just stirred the