"Good night," she said, tying on her hood and folding a large blanket shawl over her person; "it's time for me to be a going."
"Not in this rain," said Mary, "you will be wet through."
"Well, what then? I ain't neither sugar nor salt," she said, folding her shawl closer. "The old tree gives light enough, and as for a little rain I can stand that."
"It mayn't be safe to pass the hemlock, when it's on fire. I'll go with you till you get beyond that," said uncle Nathan, taking his drab overcoat from a nail behind the door.
Salina drew the shawl with still more desperate resolution around her lathy figure.
"No, sir," she said, with emphasis, "after what your sister has been saying to-night, I feel it a duty that I owe to myself to go home alone."
"But this terrible weather," said uncle Nathan, holding his great-coat irresolutely in his hand.
"As I observed before," said Salina, "I'm neither sugar nor salt, sir, but rock, marble, or, if there is a stone harder than these, I'm that."
Uncle Nathan was too thoroughly saddened for contention; indeed he scarcely noticed the magnificent change in Salina's manner; and, if the truth must be told, was rather glad to be left under the shelter of a roof, when the rain was rattling over it so fiercely.
"Well," he said, hanging up his coat again, "if you'd rather go home alone than stay all night, or let me go with you, of course I don't want to interfere."