Hephzibah turned and walked listlessly back to her kitchen and her dish-washing. Twelve hours later her unaccustomed lips were spelling out the words on a small white card which had come with a handsomely framed photograph:
The Angelus. Jean François Millet. 1859.
Hephzibah looked from the card to the picture, and from the picture back again to the card. Gradually an angry light took the place of the dazed wonder in her eyes. She turned fiercely to her husband.
"Theron, why did Helen send me that picture?" she demanded.
"Why, Hetty, I—I dunno," faltered the man, "'nless she—she—wanted ter please ye."
"Please me!—please me!" scoffed Hephzibah. "Did she expect to please me with a thing like that? Look here, Theron, look!" she cried, snatching up the photograph and bringing it close to her husband's face. "Look at that woman and that man—they're us, Theron,—us, I tell you!"
"Oh, come, Hetty," remonstrated Theron; "they ain't jest the same, yer know. She did n't mean nothin'—Helen did n't."
"Didn't mean nothing!" repeated Hephzibah scornfully; "then why did n't she send something pretty?—something that showed up pretty things—not just fields and farm-folks! Why did n't she, Theron,—why did n't she?"
"Why, Hetty, don't! She—why, she—"
"I know," cut in the woman, a bright red flaming into her cheeks. "'T was 'cause she thought that was all we could understand—dirt, and old clothes, and folks that look like us! Don't we dig and dig like them? Ain't our hands twisted and old and—"