"Good-bye, Mr. Gregory."
I walked rapidly back to the cottage. I was thinking as rapidly as I walked. For the space of a full minute I thought of packing off ignominiously with my little household.
But before I stepped in at the door something murky had cleared away inside me.
"Oh, Hildreth! Darrie!"
The women came dragging forward. But with them, too, it was a passing mood.
My indignation at the personal outrage of the impending mob incited me as them ... till I think not one of the three of us would have stepped aside from the path of a herd of stampeding elephants.
"The yokels," and Darrie's nostrils flared, her blue blood showing, "to dare even think of such an action, against their betters!"
We lit a roaring log fire. We sat reading aloud from Shelley. As the hours drew by ... eight ... nine ... ten ... eleven ... there is no doubt that our nerves grew to a very fine edge....