This reply, commonplace enough, might have passed unnoticed had there not been a note of tragedy in her deep contralto voice.
"Why, what's the matter?" I asked.
"Don't you know?" she demanded, scowling at Henrietta's silly, vacant "tee-hee."
"Know? Know what?" I asked.
"That I'm a grass-widow."
"A grass-widow!" I echoed in astonishment, and looked upon the childish creature in sheer unbelief—for child I had always considered her. "Why, how old are you, anyway, Angela?"
"Fifteen—I mean I'm 'most fifteen."
"And you're really married!" I exclaimed again, quite aghast and altogether innocent of the construction which Angela immediately put upon the qualifying adverb.
"Well, if you don't believe me look at that!" she cried, and stuck out a tiny, dirty hand, with finger-nails worn to the quick, and decorated with a gold band broad enough and heavy enough to have held a woman ten times Angela's weight and size in the bands of indissoluble matrimony; "I was married for fair, and I was married lawful. A priest did it."