"I couldn't help it, Eben," returned Flora, in rather an injured tone. "My work had to be got ready, and I cannot cut out on the floor. It breaks my back. It is rather less trouble for you to get your book out of the other room."
Eben said nothing, but finding his book, sat down to read by the lamp.
"Well, I declare!" said Mary Clarke as Flora came in from the well bringing a heavy pail of water. "I should think somebody else might do that."
"Eben don't like to be interrupted," said Flora, demurely.
"Flora could have asked me to bring the water, I suppose," said Eben, rather loftily.
"I asked you last night," replied Flora, and Eben bit his lip without replying, for he well remembered the answer he had made and the ungracious way in which he had performed the service, which he always used to render as a matter of course.
"Are you going to have any reading to-night?" asked Mary, after tea. "If not, I will bring my books down stairs and study."
"I presume not," replied Flora. "We never do have any, now-a-days."
"It seems kind of dull to have it all so still," said Mrs. Fairchild, rather plaintively. "Of course Eben wants to read his book, but I can't help wishing, sometime, that, it was interesting to the rest of us. That is one way I miss Mr. Fairchild so much, now that the evenings are growing long. He used always to read loud to me winter evenings. I do always enjoy a book read loud so much more than I do reading it to myself; and besides, my eyes are not so good as they were."
"I do wish," said Eben, laying down his book and speaking in a voice which trembled with anger—"I do wish I could have a minute's peace somewhere. I should think, after I had been working hard all day in the mill and worried about forty different things, that I might be allowed to spend my evening in quiet with my book, without being snapped at and hinted at on every side by mother and Flora. Flora, I should think you might have a little feeling for me, but you haven't one bit."