“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your paw’s awful mad.”
He got up stiffly. “I suppose so. Well—he’s been mad before.”
“And your maw’s upset.”
“I’ll be up in my room,” he said. “Call me when dinner’s ready.”
She was back at her biscuits, laying them delicately in the pan. “Sure. Go ahead.” The door closed behind him. When she heard the click of a latch, the girl stopped her work for an instant, and looked over her shoulder at the closed door. She remained thus for a space; then brushed her arm across her forehead as though a lock of hair distressed her, and went on with her task.
Wint went to his room, and threw aside his soiled garments, and bathed and was half dressed when Hetty called up the stairs that dinner was ready. He came down into the hall as his mother entered the front door. When she saw him, she lifted her hands, and ran at him, and poured out upon him a torrent of querulous complaint. “Wint, where have you been all this time? Your father is so mad. He’s terrible mad at you. I never saw your father so worked up, Wint. I don’t see what you had to go and do a thing like that for anyhow, Wint. I told Mrs. Hullis this morning I just couldn’t see how you could do it. Your father was so set on getting elected, and everything; and he’d made so many plans, and when he came home last night I said to him—”
Hetty called from the dining-room door: “Dinner’s ready, ma’am.”
“All right, Hetty, I’m a-coming,” Mrs. Chase assured her. “Wint, you come along. I want to talk to you. I don’t see what you’re going to do about it. I don’t see—I said to your father last night that I just couldn’t see how you could—”