Mrs. Farnshaw’s ready handkerchief went up to her eyes at once.
“Now look a’ here, Lizzie, I ain’t got no other girl, an’ it’s a pretty how-de-do if I can’t have my only daughter married from my own house.”
Elizabeth fidgeted about, laying her hammer down and picking up a straw that had pushed its way through the loose rags of the carpet on which she sat. After a time she turned her eyes to Aunt Susan with a mute call for help. Susan Hornby was decidedly uncomfortable.
“I thought of course you’d come home to be married,” Mrs. Farnshaw continued.
“You know pa ’d raise a fuss as soon as I appeared,” her daughter replied.
Mrs. Farnshaw brightened. She was strong on argument. Elizabeth’s silence had disconcerted her, but if she would talk—well, Mrs. Farnshaw began to have hopes.
“You’ve been away all summer,” she sobbed, returning to her handkerchief.
Elizabeth kept her eyes on Aunt Susan’s face and did not reply again. There was another silence.
Mrs. Farnshaw began to be desperate.
“Folks has talked an’ talked,” she said, “an’ I let ’em, because I thought when you come home for th’ weddin’ it’d put a stop t’ their tongues. You’ve been down here, an’ you don’t know how hard it’s been.”