"Oh, how can you talk so?" cried I. "Why, you wouldn't have loved him."
"Maybe it ain't seemly for a woman to love," said Deb, considering. "The run of women marries the men because it's comfortable, and I'm thinkin' it's the best way. When a woman begins loving she do fret so over it. But the men, they takes it cool and easy, and does their work atween whiles."
"Well, I'm very glad you didn't do it that way at all events, Deb," said I.
"Ah, you wouldn't have had a sour old thing to rate ye if I had," laughed Deb. "But, Lor', I'm content enough. If I'd had a 'ome I'd have had cares, and a man alongside the whole blessed time, which I never could abide. But the Bible do tell us man ain't made to bide single, don't it? That's as much as to say a girl durstn't throw away her chances. And so that's what old Deb's story was for."
"If you mean to say Joyce is to marry the squire for fear Frank mightn't be faithful to her, all I have got to answer is, you're a horrible old woman, and I won't be a party to any such thing."
"Well, of all the obstinate, contrairy-headed, blind-eyed young women that ever I see'd in my whole life!" began Deb, planting her arms akimbo and looking me full in the face.
But she got no further in what seemed very much like the beginning of a sound rating of me. Joyce was coming up-stairs. The old boards cracked even under her light footfall. She was very late. Mother had been keeping her talking. Deb just nodded her head at me with an expression of anger, disappointment, impatience, and warning mysteriously mixed, and went down-stairs without so much as a good-night to my sister.
It was the last I ever heard from her on matters relating to the sentiments and affections. Such an upheaval of her busy, business-like temperament I should have thought not possible; it never was possible again to my knowledge, and the strange revelations in that apparently rough nature remain a marvel to me to this day.