Over her box came honest Ann Packet to ask the latest news—to stare in a vague idiotic way when told it.
"I am going away, Ann—don't you understand?"
"Going away?—no, I don't yet. Going where did you say, Mattie?"
"Going away from here, where I am no longer wanted, where I am suspected of being all that is vile and wrong. Going away for good!"
"Oh I my gracious—not that! Because of last night—because of——"
"Many things, Ann, which I dare not explain, and which, if explained, perhaps would not be believed in by—him. But you, Ann—what will you think of me when I'm gone, and they say behind my back how justly I was served?"
"I say?—I say?"
"You'll hear their story, and I can't tell you mine. I can only say that since I have been here, there's not a bad thought had a place in my mind, and not a good one which I did not try, for their sakes as well as my own, to cling to. I can only ask you, Ann—you who have always thought well of me—to keep your faith strong, for poor Mattie's sake."
Ann Packet gave vent to a howl at this—wrung her fat red hands together, and then fell upon Mattie's box, as though our heroine had shot her.
"You shan't pack up no more!" she screamed; "you can speak to them as to me, and they'll believe you, or they're made of stone. Why, it's a drefful shame to turn you off like this, as though you'd been found out in all that's bad."