The last sounded rather good to the girl and she stopped, encouraged, also feeling that it was best to let well enough alone; but when she looked up at him and encountered his look she shrank as if to avoid something aimed at her.
The tyrant detests anything which cringes before him, and Josiah Farnshaw was as much fired to anger by what he saw in his daughter’s face as he could have been by her defiance.
“Oh, I know you’d like to be friends!” he sneered with the fierce hatred of a man caught in an evil act. “Now that you’re goin’ away you’d like t’ be on good terms with me, would you? How many cows would you like for your peaceable intentions? What’s th’ price of your friendship, anyhow? Of course you don’t owe me anything! You’re a lady! Now that you’re goin’ t’ set up housekeepin’ you’d like t’ be good friends. You’ll get nothin’ from me; I’ll let you know that right here and now. Go along with you; I don’t want nothin’ from you, an’ I don’t propose t’ give nothin’ to you.”
It was so coarse, so brutal, so untrue, that the girl met him once in his life as he deserved.
“Keep your cows,” she said in the low tones of concentrated bitterness. “I don’t want them, nor money from you. I don’t owe you anything, either. I’ve done more work and furnished you more money than ever I cost you since the day I was born. I knew no one could explain anything to you. I told ma so, but she’s afraid for her life of you, and insisted. I’ve tried to keep the peace with you, really, but no one ever has or ever will be able to do that. I’ll let you alone after this.”
“You damned huzzy!” the now thoroughly aroused man exclaimed, lunging forward to strike her with his open hand. He had only listened to her so far because there had been something so compelling in the rush of her words that he had been stupefied by astonishment into doing so.
Patsie, who was in line with the blow, reared and threw herself against her mate, knowing what that tone of her master’s voice indicated, and his hands were so occupied for a few seconds in quieting the team that he could not follow his daughter and administer the chastisement he wished.
“I’ll thrash you within an inch of your life!” he cried, however, when he saw her disappearing through the open door of the house.
“Now, and what have you done?” Mrs. Farnshaw demanded when the breathless girl pushed rapidly past her at the inner door and faced about defiantly in the middle of the kitchen.
“I don’t want to hear another word about it, ever. I’ve done it about as bad as I could, I guess, but I’ll never take another whipping from him, and you needn’t expect it.”