“She fusses ’em most to death!” said Mrs. Peace. “If I was a hen I should go raving distracted if Rachel Merion had the rearin’ of me. Why, Anne! why, look at Rachel this minute, runnin’ down the garden path. She looks as if something was after her. My sakes! she’s comin’ in here. What in the—”
Rachel Merion, a tall handsome young woman with a general effect of black and red about her, came out of her door and down the path like an arrow shot from a bow. At one dash she reached the gate and paused to flash a furious look back at the house; with a second dash she was across the road, and in another instant she stood in Mrs. Peace’s sitting-room, quivering like a bowstring.
“Mis’ Peace!” she cried. “Anne! he’s done it! he has! he has, I tell you! I’ll go crazy or drown myself; I will! I will!”
She began beating the air with her hands and screaming in short breathless gasps. Mrs. Peace looked calmly at her over her spectacles.
“There, Rachel!” she said. “You are in a takin’, aren’t you? Set down a spell, till you feel quieter, and then tell us about it.”
Anne, seeing the girl past speech, rose quietly, and taking her hand, forced her to sit down; then taking a bowl of water from the table, wet her brow and head repeatedly, speaking low and soothingly the while: “There, Rachel! there! You’re better now, aren’t you? Take a long breath, and count ten slowly; there! there!”
The angry girl took a deep breath and then another; soon the power of speech returned, and broke out in a torrent.
“I always knew he would!” she cried. “I’ve looked for it ever since Mother was cold in her grave and before, you know I have, Anne Peace. I looked for it with Aunt ’Melia till I routed her out of the house, and I looked for it with Mis’ Wiley till I sent her flying. I wish’t now I’d let ’em alone, both of ’em. I’d sooner he’d married ’em both, and been a Turk and done with it, instead of this.”
Mrs. Peace looked over her spectacles with mild severity.