The face of Dus flushed; but she looked me full in the eye, as she nodded her head to express an affirmative; and she smiled as sweetly as ever woman smiled.
"For amusement—to say you have done it—in jest!"
"To help my uncle and brother, who had not the means to hire a second man."
"Good God! Miss Malbone—Ursula—Dus——"
"The last is the most proper name for a chainbearess," rejoined the girl, smiling; and actually taking my hand by an involuntary movement of her sympathy in the shock I so evidently felt. "But, why should you look upon that little toil as so shocking, when it is healthful and honest? You are thinking of a sister reduced to what strikes you as man's proper work."
Dus relinquished my hand almost as soon as she had touched it; and she did it with a slight start, as if shocked at her own temerity.
"What is man's work, and man's work, only."
"Yet woman can perform it; and, as uncle Chainbearer will tell you, perform it well. I had no other concern, the month I was at work, than the fear that my strength would not enable me to do as much as my uncle and brother, and thus lessen the service they could render you each day. They kept me on the dry land, so there were no wet feet, and your woods are as clear of underbrush as an orchard. There is no use in attempting to conceal the fact, for it is known to many, and would have reached your ears sooner or later. Then concealment is always painful to me, and never more so than when I hear you, and see you treating your hired servant as an equal."
"Miss Malbone! For God's sake, let me hear no more of this—old Andries judged rightly of me, in wishing to conceal this; for I should never have allowed it to go on for a moment."
"And in what manner could you have prevented it, Major Littlepage? My uncle has taken the business of you at so much the day, finding surveyor and laborers—poor, dear Frank! He, at least, does not rank with the laborers, and as for my uncle, he has long had an honest pride in being the best chainbearer in the country—why need his niece scruple about sharing in his well-earned reputation?"