"I've always said that folks who'd let their lives go to smash for want of speaking out deserved all they got. And now it looks as if I was that sort of a fool myself. Algie!" Apparently apprehensive that common sense would again yield the field to tradition, she flew: to the window. "Algie!" she shrieked.
The boy came on the run. Something in Persis' voice made him aware that the occasion did not admit of trifling.
"Algie, jump on your wheel and ride down to Mr. Hardin's store. Tell him that if it's convenient I'd like to see him this evening. Quick now."
Algie's obedience was instantaneous. With compressed lips Persis watched his vanishing figure, her color coming and going.
"Well, so far, so good. I guess now I've got up my courage to send for him I can leave the rest to luck."
Thomas came that evening, extremely self-conscious in a new suit, his air of unwonted elegance heightened by a fresh shave and with his shoes polished into almost immodest prominence. The children, in spite of their aggrieved protests, had been sent to bed with the chickens. Mary had been despatched to young Mrs. Thompson's on an errand, and the two had the house to themselves. Thomas waited for Persis to explain her summons. As she rendered him no assistance, he took the responsibility of steering the conversation.
"I looks pretty fine round here, Persis. Shouldn't hardly know the place."
"Well, there have been lots of changes, Thomas, Joel gone and all.
Five children in a house change things without anybody to help 'em."
"They're nice-looking children, too. That oldest boy, Algie, takes my eye."
"He'll be better-looking when that cut on his lip heals up. He got hurt in a fight the other day, the second he's had in three months. I wanted to ask you what you thought I'd ought to do when he gets to fighting."