commanding--was preparing two bowls of mush for the aged people, who
could eat only soft food and complained bitterly while eating that. She
was a woman of some sixty years, with a stern handsome face under harsh
bands of yellowish gray hair, and a mouth that sank in at one corner
where her upper teeth had been drawn. Her figure was erect and flat as a
lath, and this flatness was accentuated by the extreme scantiness of
her drab calico dress. In her youth she had been beautiful in a hard,
obvious fashion, and her eyes would have been still fine except for
their bitter and hostile expression.

At the table there were Abner Revercomb, some ten or twelve years
older than Abel, and Archie, the youngest child, whom Sarah adored and
bullied. Blossom was busy about something in the cupboard, and on either
side of the stove the old people sat with their small, suspicious eyes
fixed on the pan of mush which Sarah was dividing with a large wooden
spoon into two equal portions. Each feared that the other would receive
the larger share, and each watched anxiously to see into which bowl the
last spoonful would fall. For a week they had not spoken. Their old age
was racked by a sharp and furious jealousy, which was quite exclusive
and not less exacting than their earlier passion of love.

With a finishing swirl of the big wooden spoon, the last drops of mush
fell into grandfather's bowl, while a sly and injured look appeared
instantly on the face of his wife. She was not hungry, but it annoyed
her unspeakably that she should not be given the larger portion of food.
Her rheumatism was severer than her husband's, and it seemed to her that
this alone should have entitled her to the greater share of attention.
There was a fierce contempt in her manner when she alluded to his age
or to his infirmities, for although he was three years her elder, he was
still chirpy and cheerful, with many summers, as she said resentfully,