“It’s hardly fit to sit here and cry before the whole County,” he observed.
“The whole County knows,” she returned in the egotism of youthful misery.
Her voice, too, was like Lettice’s—sweet with the premonition of the querulous note that, Rutherford Berry had once said, distinguished all good women.
A sudden intuition directed his gaze upon the Courthouse lawn.
“They’re selling you out,” he hazarded, “for debt.”
She nodded, with trembling lips. “Cannon is,” she specified.
Cannon was the storekeeper for whom his brother-in-law clerked. He thought again, how monotonous, how everlastingly alike, life was. “You just let the amount run on and on,” he continued; “you got this and that. Then, suddenly, Cannon wanted his money.”
Her eyes opened widely at his prescience. “But there was sickness too,” she added; “the baby died.”
“Ah,” Gordon said curtly. The lines in his worn face deepened, his mouth was inscrutable.
“If it hadn’t been for that,” she confided, “we could have got through. Everything had started fine. Alexander’s father had left him the place: there isn’t a better in the Bottom. Alexander says Mr. Cannon has always wanted it. Now ... now ...” her blue gaze blurred with slow tears.