"Did he see Jason?"
"Yes, he came out when he heard the noise and asked what they wanted. The old man is getting the best of him, John Appleseed said."
"And while his father was alive, he hated him so."
"Well, it's often like that, I reckon. Maybe he hated him all the more because he felt he was like him." Nathan shook his head as if he were dislodging a gnat. "I must say, for my part, I'd have picked the old man of the two. At least he wasn't white-livered."
White-livered! It seemed to Dorinda that the old man himself was speaking to her out of his grave. Even he, steeped in iniquity, had scorned Jason because he lacked the courage of his wickedness.
Not for years had she heard directly of the Greylocks, and while she listened she felt that the streak of cruelty in her own nature was slowly appeased.
"I wonder why he never went North again?" Nathan said, as he rose to undress. "I remember he told me once years ago that all he wanted was a quiet life. He didn't care a damn for the farm, he said, he'd always hated it."
Yes, it was true, he had always hated it. Through his whole life he had been tied by his own nature to the thing that he hated.
When the tenth of August came, Dorinda put on her best dress, a navy blue and white foulard which Leona Prince, the new dressmaker, had cut after the fashionable "Princesse style." She was waiting on the porch when Nathan, who had just removed his overalls, looked out of the window to ask if they were going to walk.
"No, let's have the surrey." For a reason which she did not stop to define she preferred the long way by the road to the short cut over the fields. "Lena wants to go with us."