"It's treated you all right," agreed the other, regarding her countenance critically. "You've dropped off five years this winter. Come summer you'll shed ten more, like enough, and look like you ought to look, Eliza. You ain't any old woman."
Eliza ignored the blandishment.
"I can see in the glass I look better," she returned impersonally, "and it makes me mad to think it's all because I live in the house with a sacrifice. Supposin' I'd come back to this island alone."
"Mrs. Wright don't act like any sacrifice," protested Captain James; "she's chipper as a canary bird."
"Of course she is. That's the kind of a wife a man like that's sure to get. It's been my lot in life, James, to live with angels," added Eliza fiercely. "Can you tell me why I should be just as cantankerous as ever?"
Captain James laughed. "Mebbe there's as much truth in that talk about original sin as there is about native air," he returned. "You always was a limb, Eliza."
She smiled reluctantly. "I warned her before I came," she returned, grave again. "I told her I was bad, and set."
"But you couldn't scare her, eh?"