Jake Ransom watched Elizabeth drag her listless feet up the steps and shot a look of disdain at the back of John Hunter as he followed her.
“You dirty cuss!” he exclaimed under his breath. “Lizzie’s as good a woman as th’ is in this country, an’ she don’t git nothin’ she wants. I bet I see t’ gittin’ them horses ready next Sunday myself.”
Going into her bedroom, Elizabeth Hunter laid off the finery of girlhood, and with it her girlhood also.
“I’ll never ask him again,” she told herself, and put her hair back into its woman’s knot and went to the kitchen and began dinner.
Susan Hornby shaded her eyes with her hand, and looked up the road for the fortieth time.
“The baby must be worse, Nate,” she said to her husband when at last there had to be a discussion of the matter.
Nathan Hornby followed her into the kitchen and helped to take up the dinner which had been waiting over an hour. His head burned with indignation, but there was something in Susan’s defeat which brooked no discussion on his side. They had come as near quarrelling over this invitation as they had ever done about anything in their married life.
As they sat at the table eating their belated dinner, a lonely horseman appeared coming down the road from the west.
“It’s Jake! I wonder if he’s going for the doctor?” Susan exclaimed. “You never can tell what anybody has to contend with.” And the meal was left to cool unfinished as the old couple left the house and hailed the rider.