"Why don't you work and buy your wood?" asked he, angered by this sudden demand upon his charity.
"I worked as long as I could leave my child," answered Mrs. Danforth, "and I thought maybe you would be willing to allow me something for my work here."
"Allow you something, woman? Don't I give you the rent of that great house for the few light chores you do for us, which really amount to nothing? Your impudence is astonishing;" and Esq. Pimble's voice quivered with rage, as he thus addressed the trembling woman.
Dilly stood irresolute, and Mr. Pimble was silent a few moments, when a voice from the parlor called out, imperiously, "Pimble, I want you!"
The man roused himself and rushed to the door in such haste as to lose both his slippers.
"What are you blabbing about out there?" Dilly heard Mrs. Pimble ask, in an angry tone.
"Dilly Danforth has come for some wood," was the moody reply.
"And so you are giving wood to that lazy, foolish, stupid creature, are you?"
"No, I am not. She says her boy is sick and she has no fire."
"A pretty tale, and I hope 'tis true. She'll learn by and by her sin and folly. If she had asserted her own rights, as she should have done, and left her drunken husband and moping boy years ago, she might have been well off in the world by this time. But she chose like an idiot to live with him and endure his abuses till he died, and since she has tied herself to that foolish boy. O, I have no patience with such stupid women! They are a disgrace to the true female race. Go and tell her to go home and never enter my doors a-begging again."