“You’d ort to talk about anybody a-making a fool o’ hisself! After you a-pulling my gethers clean out o’ the band—right in meeting! You’d ort to tell me I’d best leave Patience Appleby be! I don’t mean to leave her be. I mean to let her know she can’t ac’ scandalous, and then set herself up as being as good’s church folks and Christians. I’ll give her her come-uppings!”
For probably the first time in his married life Mr. Willis yielded to his feelings. “God-a’mighty, mother,” he said; “sometimes you don’t seem to have common sense! I reckon you’d best leave Patience Appleby be, if you know when you’re well off.” Then, frightened at what he had said, he walked on, hurriedly, swinging the lantern harder than ever.
Mrs. Willis walked behind him, dumb.
The day was cold and gray. Mrs. Willis opened with difficulty the broken-down gate that shut in Patience Appleby’s house. “And no wonder,” she thought, “it swags down so!”
There was a foot of snow on the ground. The path to the old, shabby house was trackless. Not a soul had been there since the snow fell—and that was two days ago! Mrs. Willis shivered under her warm shawl.
Patience opened the door. Her slow, heavy steps on the bare floor of the long hall affected Mrs. Willis strangely.
Patience was very tall and thin. She stooped, and her chest was sunken. She wore a dingy gray dress, mended in many places. There was a small, checked shawl folded in a “three-cornered” way about her shoulders. She coughed before she could greet her visitor.
“How d’you do, Mis’ Willis,” she said, at last. “Come in, won’t you?”
“How are you, Patience?” Mrs. Willis said, and, to her own amazement, her voice did not sound as stern as she had intended it should.
She had been practicing as she came along, and this voice bore no resemblance whatever to the one she had been having in her mind. Nor, as she preceded Patience down the bare, draughty hall to the sitting-room, did she bear herself with that degree of frigid dignity which she had always considered most fitting to her position, both socially and morally.