"Can you suspect that such news will be welcome tidings in this home?" cried Mrs. Stevens. "Ann Putnam, truly you must believe that I am unworthy to be called woman, if you think I can rejoice at the downfall of that good woman."
"Good woman!" shrieked Ann Putnam, stamping her foot on the floor with such force as to make the house quiver. "Good woman! She is a witch! She opposed our beloved pastor his stipend; she wished to remove him, and because she failed, she now assails his household with her witchcraft. Oh, vile creature, I would I had never seen her!"
"Ann Putnam, you are deluded."
"Deluded!" shrieked Ann Putnam, her eyes flashing with fire. "Could you all but see me in my sore afflictions, could you but know the fits I have, and witness the suffering of her victims, you would not call it delusion."
"Ann Putnam, Mr. Parris has so wrought upon your imagination, that you are insane."
At the attempt to impute anything evil to her beloved pastor, Ann Putnam's rage knew no bounds, and, in a voice choking with wrath, she declared that Mr. Parris was the most saintly man living.
"His zeal for the cause of Christ hath brought down upon him the wrath of the worldly minded. He is a saint—a glorious saint, and because he denounced Cora Waters for being the child of a player, you would malign him."
"Ann Putnam," interrupted Charles Stevens, "you have no right to impugn the motives of my mother, nor to assail our guest. The zeal of Mr. Parris has made a monster of him. He is a wicked, cruel, revengeful man, rather than a follower of the meek and lowly Lamb of God."
"I will not stay where my blessed pastor is spoken so ill of!" declared Ann Putnam, and she bounded out of the door, shaking the dust off her shoes. At the gate, she paused and held her fist in the air, and at the height of her masculine voice screamed:
"I denounce you! I cry out against you, Hattie Stevens! I will to do no more with you!" and having performed that wonderful act of discarding a former friend, she turned about and hurried over the hill.