"You can go into the kitchen, Mary Ann," she said, with tones that had a kind of rumble, like the beginning of a large thunder-peal, before its threat has become fury. "See to the range, you know. Dump all the coal out, and then sift it."
Mary Ann went uneasily toward the door. She understood that this order thinly masked a bluff command for her absence. Mrs. Twining slowly turned her head, and followed the poor factotum with her kindled black eyes till she had quitted the room. Then she looked with stern directness at her husband.
"I've stood a good deal from you," she said, pitching her voice in a much shriller key, "but I ain't going to stand this, Francis Twining, and it's time I told you so."
Twining rose. He did not look at all angry. There was a weary distress on his face, mixed with an unhabitual firmness.
"What have you stood?" he asked.
"Being browbeat by you, sir, because I see fit to talk out my mind, and ain't the weak-spirited goose you'd like to have me!" retorted Mrs. Twining, all rage and outcry.
"I don't want a quarrel," said Twining, calm as marble. "God knows I don't, Jane! But the time has come for me to speak plainly. I have never browbeaten you. It has been quite the opposite. I have already borne too much from you for the sake of peace. But no peace springs from that course. So now I mean to try another. You and I must live apart, since we can't agree." He turned to Claire, at this point, and reached out one hand, resting it on the girl's head. "Let our child choose which of us she will go with," he added.
Claire started up, sprang to her father's side, and nestled herself against him, catching one of his hands in both her own and drawing his arm about her neck. She was trembling with what seemed sudden fear as she looked up into his face.
"Father," she cried, "I'll go with you! I couldn't live alone with Mother. If you go, take me with you! Promise—please promise! Mother isn't good to me a bit. I couldn't live alone with her! She is cross nearly all the time, when you're not here, and she struck me yesterday, and she often does it, and I didn't ever tell you before, because I knew it would trouble you so to know!"
These words were spoken in a high, pleading, plaintive voice. The child's sad little secret had been wrung from her by sheer terror of desertion. There was no accusative resentment in her tones; she might have gone on for a long time hiding the truth; it had leapt to her lips now only in the shape of an impetuous argument against the dreaded chance of being left behind, should her father's menace of departure become fact. Mrs. Twining moved from her own side of the table to where her husband and daughter stood. She looked persistently at Claire, during this action, and had soon drawn very close to her.