Having made every one as uncomfortable as possible, Mrs. Deans went her way.
Myron and Liz went out to their hoeing, Liz saying when once out of earshot of Mr. Deans:
"Did ye hear her jist, Myron, with that talk about 'eternal lakes of burning'—what's 'eternal' but 'continual?'—an' if Mrs. Deans ain't a continual burning torment her own self, I'll never drink water! Ain't she now, Myron? Why don't you speak out and say what you think? Keep still? Told us not to talk? Of course she did! She'd stop the dogs from barking if she could; I'll talk all I like! Old Stiffen can't see me till I get past the third currant bush, and I'll take care to be quiet then—old wretch he is! I'd like to scald him some day to see if that would limber him up and take him out of the kitchen, a-watchin' and a-watchin'." Liz, as a matter of fact, talked more than she hoed; but she had worked hard in a compulsory silence since daybreak, so it was hardly to be wondered at that she should be both slow and voluble now.
Myron's own eyes were heavy, and as she bent above her hoeing, her hands were none too eager for the toil, nor her feet too ready to advance; she worked on steadily though, and was beginning a new row before Liz completed her first one; as Liz passed her after some time to begin her second row, she said in an explosive undertone:
"You can't scare me with no hell-fire after living along o' Mrs. Deans;" then seeing Myron paid no heed, she muttered to herself, "and old Stiffen, too, he'd sicken any devil, a-watchin' and a-watchin'."
Liz, it will be seen, was not the model child of story book fame; the girl was the ordinary type of her class, with a thousand inherited failings, a dozen minor vices; but against these she had a heart that ached for love, a tongue that told the truth though it earned a blow; a generous and impulsive soul: but, alas, in Mrs. Deans' house she absorbed naught of good to offset her faults, save the virtue of courage and endurance, which, seeing Myron Holder's bravery, she cultivated through shame.
The hours passed.
Watching the girls as closely as he could, Henry Deans sat blinking in the sun, like a malevolent lizard lying in wait for flies.
Mrs. Deans meantime made her way along the road to Mrs. White's. The White house stood back some distance from the road, and was approached by a long, narrow lane, bordered by weather-beaten rail fences, none too well kept, Mrs. Deans thought wrathfully, as she stumbled over a broken rail; the grass had grown so rank about it that it was almost entirely hidden. Mrs. Deans inveighed against shiftlessness in general, and the White type in particular, all the way to the front door, whose iron handle and heavy knocker bespoke the age of the house; it was, indeed, one of the old landmarks, built at a time when the settlers hewed the finest oak trees in the wood for their kitchen rafters, and begrudged not to use the magnificent black walnuts for their stairs. This house had been the first one in Jamestown to have shutters—massive, solid affairs of oak, adjusted and held in place by heavy bars of iron that extended diagonally across them; the Whites, however, were much distressed by the old style of these shutters, and a year or two previously had substituted modern green slatted shutters upon the front of the house.