And, as I waited, her voice
seeped thinly through the boarding.
"I don't believe it."--Her voice came quietly, almost without
intonation. "Tom Breighton wouldn't be his friend then.--They're both
fine and straight--and--"
"They are, are they?" he jeered. "Ye've learned to tell such things out
here in th' country, I suppose--"
"There are things," she retorted, "I've learned."
He began drawling his words again, as he always did when he had got
himself under control.
"I suppose ye're _insinuatin'_ ye don't like it here--don't like what
ye're pore ol' Father c'n do fur ye?"
Her look of contempt would have cut short another man.
"Ye--wantta--go?" he finished.
She nodded mutely. And at that he flared at her terribly.
"It's like ye," he shouted, "like yere mother, like all the Perkinses.
Word-breakers! cowards! _shirkers!_"
The words seared. The careful articulation of the afternoon was gone.
"Promised--if I sent ye to school, ye'd stay here winters to look after
ye're pore ol' Father--didn't ye?" He looked at her through narrow,
reddish lids, where she had backed against the door. "Didn't ye?" he
repeated. "But soon's he's done fur--soon's his _money's gone_--"
"Stop!" she cried. "_Stop i_--" Her breath caught.
He stared at her, the words shaken from him by the sheer force of her.
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