“It's worth it!” he muttered; but not even to himself did Britt mention what the price was.
Mr. Harnden's comment, delayed for some minutes, was that the girl was putting it almighty strong.
“It's her loyalty. She can't help it. She takes it from me,” declared the mother, pouring another cup of tea for her shaken nerves.
“She does, hey?” Mr. Harnden's voice indicated that he was not commending the quality mentioned.
His wife was decidedly tart in her retort that he ought to be thankful for the loyalty that enabled her to put up with all the privations of the past.
“Well, let the past be the past. I've got my feet placed now—and that hired girl is coming to-morrow.” The idea of his new prosperity revived Mr. Harnden's natural optimism. “That jailbird hasn't been away from her long enough for her to be weaned from her foolishness about him. He's safe away for seven years, and a whole lot can happen in that time—even to that loyalty that women seem to set such store by. My friend Britt comes here—into our family! That's understood. If Vona wants to eat off'n the mantelshelf in her room, well and good till she's tamed. And now—to work—to work!”
Mr. Harnden was truly very much up-and-coming those days. He rose and shook out first one leg and then the other, with the manner of a scratching rooster. The movements settled the legs of his trousers. He had a new suit of his own. It resembled Tasper Britt's. That new suit and the yellow gloves and the billycock hat excited some interest in Egypt; the new hitch that Harnden possessed excited much more interest. He was driving a “trappy” bay nag, and his new road wagon had rubber tires. Nor was Mr. Harnden doing any more inventing, so he declared to the public. The public, however, did declare behind his back that he must have invented something in the way of a system to be able to wear those clothes and drive that hitch. To be sure, there were some who insisted that the matter of Vona was still potent with Britt and that Britt's money was behind Harnden. But there were more who were certain that it was not the style of Britt to invest in any such remote possibility as a girl who openly declared that she proposed to wait seven years for the man of her choice.
Harnden had a new business; he was selling nursery stock. But that business did not account for his prosperity. He was taking town orders for his goods—taking orders on the town treasury, orders that had long been creased in wallets or had grown yellow in bureau drawers or had been dickered about at a few cents on the dollar and accepted when a debtor had nothing else with which to pay. Mr. Harnden said he was ready to take town orders at any time. He optimistically declared that his faith in the old town was firmly fixed. That optimism was entirely in accord with Mr. Harnden's past professions; and nobody wondered much, because he was so foolish. But he was not wholly a fool in that matter. He had only about a fifty-per-cent faith in Egypt—he insisted on that much discount when he took in a town order. Even at that rate, Ossian Orne did insist that Harnden was a complete fool. Orne would not take town orders for his nursery stock. But Orne's nose was out of joint, it was generally agreed. Harnden's lithographs showed apples twice as big as Orne's book did; the pears fairly oozed sweetness from their plump, pictured mellowness; there were peaches that provoked folks to make funny noises at the corners of their mouths when the optimistic Harnden flipped a page and brought the fruit to view. Nobody had ever heard of a peach tree growing among the rocks of Egypt. On the other hand, nobody supposed that a town order on the Egypt treasury was worth anything, as things stood. There were folks who bought peach trees!
And in the meantime there was much clatter in and about the old Britt house, tumble of timbers and rip of wainscotings and snarl of drawing nails. Out from the gaping windows floated the powdery drift of the plastering which the broad shovels had tackled. The satirists said that it was noticeable that the statue of Tasper Britt in the cemetery had settled down heavier on its heels, as if making grimly sure that Hittie was staying where she could not interfere.
In the meantime, also, Tasper Britt and a hired girl had become fixtures in the Harnden home—and the hired girl was quite in love with Vona and in entire sympathy with her stand; the girl brought to Vona's room the tidbits of all the meals and offered to put tacks in Britt's doughnuts if that would help matters any.