“If it's any thing you've got to say against that poor girl out there,” pointing to the garden, where Sally was busy tying up chrysanthemums “you may as well save yourself the trouble. I shan't hear it,” and Hetty looked her unwelcome visitor still more defiantly in the face. Mrs. Little colored, and stung at last into a command of her organs of speech, said, not without dignity:
“You needn't suppose that I wish to do any thing to injure the woman my son has married. It was Jim who asked his father to tell you—”
“For goodness' sake, do say what it is you've got to say, can't you?” burst out Hetty, impatiently. But Mrs. Little was not to be hurried. Between her uneasiness at being face to face with Hetty, and her false sense of embarrassment in speaking of the subject she had come to speak of, it took her a long time to make Hetty understand that poor Sally, finding that she was to be a mother again, had been afraid to tell Hetty herself, and had taken this method of letting her know the fact.
Hetty listened breathlessly, her blue eyes opening wide, and her cheeks growing red. She did not speak. Mrs. Little misinterpreted her silence.
“If you didn't want the baby here, I 'd take it,” she said almost beseechingly, “if Sally'd let me: it would break Jim's heart if they should have to leave here.”
“Not want the baby!” shouted Hetty, in a voice which reached Sally in the garden, and made her look up, thinking she was called. “I should think you must be crazy, Mrs. Little;” and, with the involuntary words, there entered for the first time into her mind a wonder whether Mrs. Little's whole treatment of her son and his wife were not so monstrous as to warrant a doubt as to her sanity. “Not want the baby! Why I'd give half the farm to have a baby running about here. How could Sally help knowing I'd be glad?” and Hetty moved swiftly towards the door, to go and seek Sally. Recollecting herself suddenly, she turned, and, halting on the threshold, said in her hardest tone:
“Is there any thing else you wish to say?”
There was ignominious dismissal in her tone, her look, her attitude; and Mrs. Little said hastily:
“Oh, no, nothing, nothing! I only want to tell you that I'd like to thank you, though, for all your kindness to Jim;” and Mrs. Little's lips quivered, and the tears came into her eyes. Hetty was unmoved by them.
“I think more of Sally than I do of Jim,” she said severely. “It's all owing to Sally that he's got a chance to hold up his head again. Good morning, Mrs. Little;” and Hetty walked out of one door, leaving her guest to make her own way out of the other.