Mrs. Deans and Mrs. Wilson talked the afternoon away, peaceably and amicably, and in the twilight Mrs. Deans went home. She met Myron half way to the village and stopped her.
"I been in to see your grandmother to-day," she said. "I wonder at you, Myron Holder, that you ain't ashamed to show your face; she's failing fast, your grandmother is, and no wonder! Well, I wouldn't have your conscience for something. Poor old woman, slaving herself to death over a young one like that. But you'll be found out yet, Myron Holder; and when you do, don't look to me, thinking I'll back you up, for I won't; the time for that's past, unless you want to take your last chance and own up the whole of it now." Mrs. Deans paused—her very attitude an interrogation.
"Good-night, Mrs. Deans," said Myron, in her soft English voice, and passed on with down-bent head.
Mrs. Deans stood for quite a minute amazed, looking after the quiet form going wearily into the dusk of the gathering night—to be left thus was a trifle too much. "I'll take it out of her for that!" said Mrs. Deans, flushing with wrath. "I'll let her know what's what, or my name ain't Deans. The idea! She'll walk off and leave me standing talking to her, will she? Well,——"
Mrs. Deans resumed her irate way. Myron Holder held on her path to the village. She was numb alike in mind and body; the accumulated weariness of days of toil and nights of painful thought pressed upon her; it was marvellous how she endured the fatigues of her life without breaking down physically. "As thy days so shall thy strength be!" has hidden a germ of bane as well as blessing. Does it not often seem as if sorrow imbued life with its own bitter tenacity? Was ever such a fearful doom pictured as that of the Eternal Wanderer "mocked with the curse of immortality"?
So Myron Holder went home in the twilight, and Mrs. Deans went home revolving fresh schemes for her humiliation, inventing new burdens for her overtaxed shoulders. "God," they say, "builds the nest of the blind bird." Is it man who lines it with thorns?
CHAPTER IX.
"A sleepy land, where under the same wheel,
The same old rut would deepen year by year."
"A life of nothings—nothing worth
From that first nothing ere his birth
To that last nothing under earth."