Mrs. Willis leaned forward in her chair. Her face was very white; her thin hands were clenched so hard the knuckles stood out half an inch.
“Patience Appleby,” she said, “you’re a wicked, sinful liar! May the Lord A’mighty fergive you—I won’t.”
“I ain’t askin’ you to take my word; you can ask Mr. Willis hisself. He didn’t go to Springville to buy him a horse, like he told you he did. ’Lizy and me had been at the circus two days when she tuk sick, and I sent fer Mr. Willis unbeknownst to anybody. He come and tuk her home and fixed it all up with her a’nt at Four Corners, and give out thet she’d been a-visitin’ there. But I had to sneak home alone and live an outcast’s life ever sense, and see her set up above me—just because Mr. Willis got down to beg me on his knees never to tell she was with me. And I never did tell a soul, Mis’ Willis, tell last winter I was sick with a fever and told Mis’ Wincoop when I was out o’ my head. But she’s never told anybody, either, and neither of us ever will. Mr. Willis has helped me as much as he could without your a-findin’ it out, but I know how it feels to be hungry and cold, and I know how it feels to see ’Lizy set up over me, and marry rich, and have nice children; and ride by me ’n her kerriage without so much as lookin’ at me—and me a-chokin’ with the dust off o’ her kerriage wheels. But I never complained none, and I ain’t a-complainin’ now, Mis’ Willis; puttin ’Lizy down wouldn’t help me any. But I do think it’s hard if I can’t be let into the church.”
Her thin voice died away and there was silence. Patience sat staring at the coals with the dullness of despair on her face. Mrs. Willis’s spare frame had suddenly taken on an old, pathetic stoop. What her haughty soul had suffered during that recital, for which she had been so totally unprepared, Patience would never realize. The world seemed to be slipping from under the old woman’s trembling feet. She had been so strong in her condemnation of sinners because she had felt so sure she should never have any trading with sin herself. And lo! all these years her own daughter—her one beloved child, dearer than life itself—had been as guilty as this poor outcast from whom she had always drawn her skirts aside, as from a leper. Ay, her daughter had been the guiltier of the two. She was not spared that bitterness, even. Her harsh sense of justice forced her to acknowledge, even in that first hour, that this woman had borne herself nobly, while her daughter had been a despicable coward.
It had been an erect, middle-aged woman who had come to give Patience Appleby her “come-uppings;” it was an old, broken-spirited one who went stumbling home in the early, cold twilight of the winter day. The fierce splendor of the sunset had blazed itself out; the world was a monotone in milky blue—save for one high line of dull crimson clouds strung along the horizon.
A shower of snow-birds sunk in Mrs. Willis’s path, but she did not see them. She went up the path and entered her comfortable home; and she fell down upon her stiff knees beside the first chair she came to—and prayed as she had never prayed before in all her hard and selfish life.
When Mr. Willis came home to supper he found his wife setting the table as usual. He started for the bedroom, but she stopped him.
“We’re a-going to use the front bedroom after this, father,” she said.
“Why, what are we going to do that fer, mother?”
“I’m a-going to give our’n to Patience Appleby.”