“It is—too late,” she said, speaking slowly because of the dryness of her throat and mouth. “Don’t you see—I must go on with it, and I—shall pay you—every cent!”
He drew a difficult breath that was almost a sob.
“You—will—pay—me,” he repeated, a dreadful self-loathing struggling with the despair in his eyes. Then he went away, quietly, as he had come.
XI
Peg Morrison smote the rough brown backs of his horses with a practised slap of the lines.
“Y’ remind me o’ the sect in gen’ral,” he observed, in a loud, critical voice, as the off member of the team backed and fidgeted uneasily. “When y’ want a female, woman er hoss, to go, thet’s th’ pertickler time they elect t’ stan’ still, an’ when y’ want ’em to stan ’still—— Whoa, thar; can’t ye?”
Mr. Morrison paused to wipe the moisture from his brow with an ancient handkerchief of red and white, while he gazed lovingly at the wide expanse of glistening brown earth which had been deeply ploughed, and more or less levelled into smoothness under the action of the harrow which the horses were dragging.
“Planted t’ onions,” he went on, still addressing his observations to the horses, whose heads drooped sleepily toward the fresh-smelling ground, “this ’ere ten acres ’ll net, anyway you figger it, four hunderd an’ fifty dollars t’ the acre; an’ that’ll total—l’me see, somethin’ like——”