"Oh, she'll be here in time for breakfast!" said Mr. Deans, with would-be sarcasm. "How you can abide that girl and Liz I don't know, Jane; no mortal good's fur's I see. That Liz eats her head off every day she rises, and as for Myron Holder, she picks and pecks and turns up her nose as if the eatin' wasn't good enough for her; it beats me what's the good of 'em."
"Well," said his wife, sharply, "there ain't no great call, fur's I see, for you to see whether they're any good or not, an' no need for you to worry over the victuals, for that I'll make shift to attend to. I suppose you'd like me to slave myself to death, and git along without 'em? Well, if that's what's on your mind, just relieve your feelings of it right away—for be a slave to no man I won't, and that settles that!" with which Mrs. Deans betook herself out to the gate to look for further manifestations bearing upon the weather, and to see if Myron Holder was coming.
Mr. Deans shrunk up in his chair, blinking as he chewed, and taking his rebuff very philosophically. He was accustomed to his wife's "onsartainness," and when any of his remarks proved a boomerang, he simply consoled himself with the thought of "better luck next time" and subsided.
Mrs. Deans went out to the gate. It was early morning, and the sun was rising unseen behind heavy masses of water-charged clouds; there was a soft grayness of impending rain in the air, a fresh smell of springing grass, and new leaves, and newly turned earth; the gulls had deserted the lake, and were soaring in oblique circles through the gray, glisteningly white; the swallows from under the eaves of the barn were journeying forth to the pond for the clay to coat their nests; the sparrows were chirping saucily, as they robbed the young chicks of the grain scattered for them; from the field behind the barn came the bleating of the lambs, and now and then there sounded a distant voice as Gamaliel or the hired men shouted to their horses.
The bound girl, coming in from milking, paused to make grimaces at the unconscious back of her benefactress, an accomplishment at which Liz was an adept. After contorting her face horribly for a few moments, accompanying herself mentally with unflattering epithets addressed to the same unconscious back, Liz went on her way to the cellar, having very much enjoyed the relaxation of her facial muscles. Mrs. Deans stood looking down the road. Her eyes were red and watery this morning, and she wiped them on the corner of her apron. Far down towards the village she could descry a vehicle of some kind, but no one on the footpath. She returned to the house, and, satisfied that Myron Holder would not arrive for some time at least, went up to the garret to "sort over" the contributions that had been sent in for the mission-box that was going to the far West. First, however, she called to her husband to watch for Myron Holder's appearance, and rap on the wall with his stick when he saw her, so that she might come down and "be ready for her." Mrs. Deans always welcomed Myron Holder with sneers or rage in the morning, just as her grandmother greeted her with reproaches or revilings at night. There would have been something comic, had it not been so cruel and so sad, in the way these women played battledore with this girl as shuttlecock and tossed her from one to the other to be buffeted.
That morning Myron Holder had just got clear of the village, when she heard behind her the rumble of wheels; they drew nearer, and at last her down-cast eyes caught the image of a wagon, but she did not look up, and did not know whose it was until she heard Homer Wilson's voice.
"Good-morning, Myron," he said; "are you going out to Deans'?"
"Good-morning. Yes," she answered, blushing and ill at ease, for he had pulled up his horses.
"Then climb in and have a ride; I'm going to town," he said.
"Oh, no; no, thank you!" said Myron, hanging back.