Mrs. Toomey replied, finally, in desperation:
“I’ll think over what you’ve said, Priscilla. I appreciate your intentions, thoroughly, believe me.”
There was a cowed note in her voice which Mrs. Pantin detected. She smiled faintly.
“I don’t know when I’ve spent such a delightful afternoon,” and kissed her.
Mrs. Toomey curbed an impulse to bite her friend as she returned the parting salute.
“And I’ve so enjoyed having you,” she murmured.
Mrs. Toomey turned pale when she looked through the front window and saw Kate, a few days after Mrs. Pantin’s visit, dismount and tie her horse to the cottonwood sapling, for the threat, which held for her all the import of a Ku-Klux warning, had been hanging over her like the sword of Damocles.
It had haunted her by day, and at night she could not sleep for thinking of it, and yet she was no nearer reaching a decision than when the struggle between her conscience and her cowardice had started.
Quite instinctively she glanced again to see if the neighbors were looking. There were interested faces at several windows. Mrs. Toomey had a sudden feeling of irritation, not with the sentinels doing picket duty but with Kate for tying her horse in front so conspicuously. Mrs. Toomey shrank from the staring eyes as though she had found herself walking down the middle of the road in her underclothing.