“That's right, boy; stick up to her!” and he chuckled and munched together in a way which it made Gilbert sick to hear. The tail of the lean herring on his plate remained untasted; he swallowed the thin tea which Miss Ann poured out, and the heavy “half-Indian” bread with a choking sensation. He had but one desire,—to get away from the room, out of human sight and hearing.
Barton, ill at ease, and avoiding Gilbert's eye, accompanied him to the lane. He felt that the old man's garrulity ought to be explained, but knew not what to say. Gilbert spared him the trouble—
“When are we to wish you joy, Barton?” he asked, in a cold, hard voice.
Barton laughed in a forced way, clutched at his tawny whisker, and with something like a flush on his heavy face, answered in what was meant to be an indifferent tone:
“Oh, it's a joke of the old man's—don't mean anything.”
“It seems to be a joke of the whole neighborhood, then; I have heard it from others.”
“Have you?” Barton eagerly asked. “Do people talk about it much? What do they say?”
This exhibition of vulgar vanity, as he considered it, was so repulsive to Gilbert, in his desperate, excited condition, that for a moment he did not trust himself to speak. Holding the bridle of his horse, he walked mechanically down the slope, Barton following him.
Suddenly he stopped, faced the latter, and said, in a stern voice: “I must know, first, whether you are betrothed to Martha Deane.”
His manner was so unexpectedly solemn and peremptory that Barton, startled from his self-possession, stammered,—