But to the startled, eager question in the other's eyes, she vouchsafed no answer. She came to her and put her hands firmly on her shoulders.
"Tina, will you promise not to believe anything you hear them say about me? Will you promise to keep on loving me just the same?"
The girl clung to her. "Oh, yes, yes," she promised. "Always!" and then, in a shy whisper, she added: "And some day—I will not be the only one to love you."
Sabine Bob gave her a quick, almost violent kiss, and went out, not stopping for even a word of good-night. And the next day she put her plan into execution. There was a perfectly relentless logic about Sabine Bob. She saw a thing to do; and she went and did it.
As soon as her dinner dishes were washed and put away, she donned her old brown coat and the little yellow-black hat that had served her winter and summer from time immemorial, and proceeded to make a dozen calls on her friends, up and down the street. Wherever she went she talked, volubly, feverishly. She railed; she threatened; she vociferated; and the object of her vociferations was Thomas Ned. He had promised to marry her; and he had deserted her; and she would have the law on him! Marry her he must, now, whether he would or no.
"See that word?" she demanded, displaying her sheaf of compromising post-cards. "That word is wife; and the man who calls me wife must stick to it. I am not a woman to be made a fool of!"
So she stormed away, from house to house. Her friends tried to pacify her; but the more they tried, the more venom she put into her threats. And soon the news spread through the whole town. Nothing else was talked of.
"She's crazy," people said. "But she can make trouble for him, if she wants to, no doubt about it."
Sabine laughed grimly to herself. She was going to succeed. The scheme would work. She knew the kind of man Thomas Ned was: full of shifts. He had proved that already. He would never face a thing squarely. He would look for a way out.
She was right. It was only ten days later, at high mass, that the success of her strategy was tangibly proved. At the usual point in the service for such announcements, just before the sermon, Father Beauclerc, standing in the pulpit, called the banns for Thomas Boudrot, of Petit Espoir, North, and Tina Mélanie Brigitte Lejeune, of the Ponds.