"I can't think what have come to that maid!" Mrs. Hanson thought. "All contrairy and perilous defiant her be, and once——"
"Help me clear they things!" Mrs. Hanson said.
The meal was over at last. Abram brought out his pipe; he did not light it, he did not even put it between his long, yellowish teeth. He held it in his hand, he twisted it and turned it. He made of the bowl a thimble, which he set on his finger; he picked at the thin silver mount and all the time he watched Betty. And always that weak chin of his under the coarse, sparse black hairs, seemed to grow stronger and more protruberant, more pronounced.
Mrs. Hanson spun out the washing up, but it was over at last and she came back and took her usual seat by the fireplace.
"And now, Abram?" she said.
It was the signal, Betty stiffened up, she clenched her small hands; Abram dropped the pipe and stooped to recover it.
"Mrs. Hanson, Ma'am, and Betty, you both know full well why I be here to-night," he said. "Terribul slow of speech I be—" He dropped the pipe again and went in search of it; groping along the floor, again he recovered it.
"Why not put the pipe down, Abram?" Mrs. Hanson said. "Pipes be terribul easy things to drop!"
He nodded, he put the pipe down on the table and fell to plucking out the horsehairs from the chair seat.
"Terribul slow of speech I be!" he repeated. "But you, Ma'am, Mrs. Hanson, know, I think, why I be here to'night! 'Tis about the maid, Betty, your grand-darter, Ma'am!"