“I’m not going to have any fight with you, Esther,” he replied, smiling into her hostile eyes. “But you do surprise me about ’Caje. I thought he was as steady-going as a stone boat.”
She nipped her lips spitefully.
“Always a hardworking man, ’Caje has been,” the lawyer went on; “has stuck to his work a little speck too close, maybe.”
“Look here, Squire Phineas Look,” she broke in, “this ain’t gittin’ on about that di-vose. You needn’t try to beat about the bush.”
“Let’s see!” he mused. “Poor, crazy Ben Haskell’s girl, ’Liza, is teaching in the Dunham district, I believe. And Ben in the asylum these five years! Is she as pretty as her mother was before her?”
“High-headed snippet,” sniffed Mrs. Dunham. “But I’ll show her!”
The Squire set his arms on the table, his elbows squared, and a quizzical smile in the wrinkles about his eyes.
“’Caje Dunham is a good neighbour, is honest and pays his bills, Esther,” he said, “but do you think for one moment that pretty ’Liza Haskell wants that old, callous-fisted, round-shouldered husband of yours hanging around her?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she glared at him with malice in her gaze.
“A school agent in a district has to putter around the school house more or less,” he went on. “If he has been too neighbourly I’ll talk with him about it. But you’re not going to drag an innocent girl through any scandal, Esther, just to satisfy some grudge that you’ve hatched up in your own mind.”