“I guess I’ll be hurrying on toward home now. I’ll stop in on the way to-morrow morning. You’d just as well ride with me.”
“Oh, I’ll have to take Mrs. Hunter in with me,” John replied, “and I can just as well hitch up to my own rig.”
“What are you taking me in with you for, John?” Elizabeth asked, perfectly quiet on the outside, but aquiver with humiliation and dread because of the thing she was being compelled to do.
“To fix up the papers on the west eighty; you know It’ll be necessary for you to sign them too.” Addressing Mr. Johnson, he added easily: “My wife objects to going into debt, Mr. Johnson, but I felt this too good an opportunity to let pass, and since we can arrange it so that I won’t have to raise but a thousand dollars just now, I’m sure She’ll see the advisability of the move.”
Elizabeth considered a second before she began to speak, and then said slowly:
“Mr. Hunter does not understand the nature of my objection, I see. Of course if he can arrange it with you so that all the indebtedness falls on the land he is buying, I should have no objections whatever, but we cannot mortgage our home. The provisions of the will forbid it, and I shall live up to those provisions absolutely.”
The silence which followed was vocal with astonishment. The man looked from husband to wife for signs of quarrelling, but Elizabeth returned his gaze quietly, and without signs of anger, and John also gave no indication of anything but surprise. After a gasping instant, during which his instincts warned him to keep on the side of decency, John accepted the situation with seeming calm.
“Well, Mr. Johnson, if Mrs. Hunter feels that way about it, there’s nothing to do. I’m sorry to have brought you over on a fool’s errand,” he said suavely, “but it can’t be helped now. We’ll take the land later, however,” and ushered his guest out of the house and helped him untie his team without any sign of the tempest within.
John went back to the house with no concealment and no cajolery.
“We may as well know where we are and what we mean to do right here and now, Elizabeth,” he began. “If you’re going to do this kind of thing, I want to know it.”