“I’m as sorry as I can be, ma, but—I’m twenty years old, and I’ve got to go.”
There was no doubting that her mind was made up, and yet her mother threw herself against that stone wall of determination in frantic despair.
“Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie! I can’t live an’ have you do it. You don’t know, child, what I have to bear.”
“Now look here, ma; you won’t let me have things out openly with pa and come to an understanding with him, and when I told you four years ago that you ought to leave him if you couldn’t live with him peaceably you talked as if I had committed some sort of sin. You and pa are determined to fuss it out and I can’t help it, and I’ve sacrificed four good years to you and the interest is bigger than it ever was. I haven’t helped you one bit. If you want to go on living with him You’ll do it in your own way, but if your life is unbearable, and you want to leave him, I’ll see that you are provided for. The law would give you a share of this——”
The noise of the broom and of their voices had prevented them from hearing any other sounds, but a shadow fell across the middle door and Josiah Farnshaw entered the kitchen a blazing picture of wrath. Before he could speak, however, the dog on the doorstep barked sharply at a stranger who was close upon him, and the irate father was obliged to smooth his manner.
Elizabeth escaped to the bedroom as her father crossed to the kitchen to see what the man wanted, and Mr. Farnshaw went on out to the pens a moment later with the “hog buyer,” as the man proved to be.
“My God! My God! What have you done?” Mrs. Farnshaw cried, following Elizabeth into the bedroom.
“I don’t know, ma,” the girl cried, as white as her mother. “I’m going to get off to hunt up a school while that man is here. The sun has come out and it’s only ten o’clock. If you’re afraid, come along,” she advised, as she hurried into a clean calico dress and took down her old black riding skirt from its nail.
“Lizzie!” the mother exclaimed, as much afraid of the advice as she was of her husband.
There was little time left her for argument, for Elizabeth hurriedly tied a thick green veil over her plain straw hat and left the house. The hog pens were on the opposite side of the stable from the house and Elizabeth soon had Patsie, now a mare of five years, saddled and bridled.