“She knows about Horace Boyce, father,” said Jessica, flushing, but speaking calmly. “There is no need of her going.”
Lucinda, however, wiped her hands on her apron, and went out into the store, shutting the door behind her. Then Ben, ostentatiously regarding the hands he held out over the stove, and turning them as if they had been fowls on a spit, sought hesitatingly for words with which to unbosom himself.
“You see,” he began, “as I was a-saying, Hod Boyce is the lawyer, and he’s pretty thick with Schuyler Tenney, his father’s partner, which, of course, is only natural; and Tenney he kind of runs the whole thing—and—and that’s it, don’t you see!”
“You didn’t send Lucinda out in order to tell me that, surely?”
“Well, no. But Hod being the lawyer, as I said, why, don’t you see, he has a good deal to say for himself with the women-folks, and he’s been off with them down to the sea-side, and so it’s come about that they say—”
“They say what?” The girl had laid down her work altogether.
“They say he’s going to marry the girl you call Kate—the big one with the black eyes.”
The story was out. Jessica sat still under the revelation for a moment, and held up a restraining hand when her father offered to speak further. Then she rose and walked to and fro across the little room, in front of the stove where Ben sat, her hands hanging at her side and her brows bent with thought. At last she stopped before him and said:
“Tell me all over again about the stopping of the works—all you know about it.”
Ben Lawton complied, and re-stated, with as much detail as he could command, the facts already exposed.