“So she has run to you with her budget, has she?” demanded the woman, her expression still more malevolent.
“No, I haven’t seen ’Lize Haskell for months,” said the Squire with candour.
“Oh, she ain’t the one I mean,” Mrs. Dunham snapped. “I mean the pompous Queen o’ Sheby that was sittin’ in that school house yistiddy when I called there to give the little fool her come-uppance right before her scholars.”
She nipped her lips and looked at him so spitefully and meaningly that a flush crept up from under his collar.
He knew that the motherless girl had become a protégé of Sylvena Willard’s at the time that Ben Haskell had been taken to the madhouse.
“No wonder you’re ’shamed,” the woman went on angrily. “You all of you are in the plot ag’inst me. I give her her earful, all right, Willard so high and mighty, or no Willard. That teacher and her, the both of ’em, got it straight from me.”
“Do you mean to say that you went to the school house and abused that girl before Sylvena Willard?” demanded the Squire, standing up and glowering down on her.
But her spirit was equal to his, for her anger was bitterer.
“If any woman gits in my way when I’m doin’ my bounden duty by myself,” she retorted, “she gits what’s comin’ to her. Says I to that snifflin’ school-marm, ‘There’s no man what’s draggin’ at a woman’s gown-tail unless he gits encouragement.’ And I says to Miss Queen Sheby of the Willards, ‘You can take that to yourself, you that’s tryin’ to shet me up. King Bradish and Squire Phin Look wouldn’t both be——”
“Esther Dunham,” he shouted, “not another word. Not one word!”