She laughed her thin mocking laugh. “And the more he has of ’em the better, I s’pose! You don’t happen to remember, do you, any place where it says she that finds a husband finds a good thing?”
Apparently the exact verse was not at hand, but Ruel Saxon was prepared without it. “There are some things that folks with common sense are s’posed to know without being told,” he said tartly.
The words had come so fast from both sides that even Aunt Elsie had not been able to interpose till this moment. She seized the pause now with hurrying eagerness. “Aunt Katharine,” she said, “here you are sitting all this time with your bonnet on. You must take it off and stay to supper with us.”
The old woman rose and untied the strings. “Thank ye kindly, Elsie,” she said; “I b’lieve I will.”
[CHAPTER IX—A GLIMPSE FROM THE INSIDE]
In the cool of the day Aunt Katharine and Esther walked together across the fields to the little house on the county road. The sunset was throbbing itself out above the hills in a glory of crimson and gold, and the girl’s face seemed to have caught the shining as she moved tranquilly toward it.
In the doorway of the barn Tom and Kate watched them go, and exchanged comments with their usual frankness. It was their favorite place for discussion—that and the wood-pile—and few were the subjects of current interest which did not receive a tossing back and forth at their hands when the day’s work was done.
“TOM AND KATE WATCHED THEM GO.”
“That’s an uncommon queer thing for Aunt Katharine to do,” observed Tom. “When she’s been left alone before she’s always got one of the Riley girls to stay there and paid her for doing it. She must have taken a shine to Esther. Maybe she thinks she can work her round to some of her notions.”