"But you ought to care, Judith Hart, if it's only for your father's sake. Somebody'll be telling him, next."
A look of affright broke through the fire in Judith's eyes, and her voice was somewhat subdued as she answered:
"But what can they tell him or any one else? Come in and tell me what they say; not that I care, only for the fun of laughing at it. Come in, Mrs. Parsons!"
Mrs. Parsons stepped within the hall and sat down in the only chair it contained, when she took off her sun-bonnet and commenced to fan herself with it, for the good woman was heated both by her walk across the fields and the curbed anger which Judith's rudeness had inspired.
"Laugh!" she said, at last. "I reckon you'll laugh out of the other side of your mouth one of these days! Talk like this isn't a thing that you or your father can afford to put up with."
"People had better let my father alone! He is as good a man as ever lived, every inch of him, if he does go out to days' work for a living!"
"That he is!" rejoined Mrs. Parsons; "which is the reason why no one has told him what was going on."
"But what is going on?" questioned Judith, with an air that would have been disdainful but for the keen anxiety that broke through all her efforts.
"That which I have seen with my own eyes I will speak of. The young man who stops each week at the public-house yonder comes up the hill too often; people have begun to watch for him, and the talk grows stronger every day. I don't join in; but most of the neighbors seem to think that you are on the highway to destruction, and are bound to break your father's heart."
"Indeed!" sneered Judith, white with wrath.