Isaiah said nothing; he did not attempt to answer. Instead he gaped at her with such an expression of guilty surprise, fright, and apprehension that at any other time she would have laughed. Just now, however, she was far from laughing.
“Come! come!” she said, impatiently. “I mean it. I want you to tell me all about this Edgar Farmer.”
“Now—now, Mary-'Gusta, I told you—”
“You told me a very little. Now I want to know the rest. Everyone else in this family knows it and it is time I did. I'm not a child any more. Tell me the whole story, Isaiah.”
“I shan't neither. Oh, by godfreys, this is what I get by sayin' more'n I ought to! And yet how could I help it when I see that tintype? It's just my luck! Nobody else but me would have had the dratted luck to have that picture stuck into their face and eyes unexpected. And 'twas just so when you found that other one years ago up attic. I had to be the one you sprung it on! I had to be! But I shan't tell you nothin'!”
“Yes, you will. You must tell me everything.”
“Well, I shan't.”
“Very well. Then I shall go straight to Uncle Shad.”
“To who? To CAP'N SHAD! Oh, my godfreys mighty! You go to him and see what he'll say! Just go! Why, he'd shut up tighter'n a clam at low water and he'd give you fits besides. Go to Cap'n Shad and ask about Ed Farmer! My soul! You try it! Aw, don't be foolish, Mary-'Gusta.”
“I'm not going to be foolish, Isaiah. If I go to Uncle Shad I shall tell him that it was through you I learned there was such a person as the Farmer man and that there was a secret connected with him, that it was a disagreeable secret, that—”