“What d'ye want me ter do? Fight a old man?” he exclaimed, angrily.
She kept silence, only looking at him with a flushed cheek and a scornful laughing eye.
He went on, resentfully: “I ain't 'shamed,” he stoutly asserted. “Nobody 'lowed I oughter be, It's him, plumb bowed down with shame.”
“The shoe's on the t'other foot,” she cried. “It's ye that oughter be 'shamed, an' ef ye ain't, it's more shame ter ye. What hev he got ter be 'shamed of?”
“'Kase,” he retorted, “he war fetched up afore a court on a crim'nal offence—a-cussin' afore the court! Ye may think it's no shame, but he do; he war so 'shamed he gin up his office ez jestice o' the peace, what he hev run fur four or five times, an' always got beat 'ceptin' wunst.”
“Dad!” but for the whisper she seemed turning to stone; her dilated eyes were fixed as she stared into his face.
“An' I seen him a-ridin' off from town in the rain arterward, his head hangin' plumb down ter the saddle-bow.”
Her amazed eyes were still fastened upon his face, but her hand no longer trembled on the back of the chair.
He suddenly held out his own hand to her, his sympathy and regret returning as he recalled the picture of the lonely wayfarer in the rain that had touched him so. “Oh, Eveliny!” he cried, “I never war so beset an' sorry an'—”
She struck his hand down; her eyes blazed. Her aspect was all instinct with anger.